Concern is growing on the EU’s eastern border over a surge in migrants using the Western Balkans – and Serbia in particular – as a gateway to enter the bloc.
This route is partly the result of Serbia’s friendly visa policy. The country allows visa-free travel from countries like India, Tunisia and Burundi, but it also benefits from a visa-free travel agreement with the EU. This makes it easier for people to travel to Serbia and then continue on to the EU.
Statistics show the growing attractiveness of the Western Balkans route.
In the first nine months of 2022, authorities detected more than 106,000 people entering the EU from the Western Balkans without official papers, more than three times more than in 2021. This figure is around ten times higher to that of the same period in 2019. according to recent EU figures.
The rise has caught the attention of the EU, with interior ministers making it a top priority on Friday at a meeting in Luxembourg.
On Thursday evening, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, summoned ministers from the most affected countries, including Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, to discuss the issue. Then, in a formal meeting on Friday, interior ministers are expected to discuss the topic over lunch, hoping to freely exchange views, a diplomat said.
European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas is also expected to report to ministers on his recent tour of Western Balkan capitals, including Belgrade, where he asked officials to change their visa policies.
Although the issue has been largely ignored, it could become an even bigger point of contention in the months to come. Eastern EU countries already claim they are already shouldering a huge share of the bloc’s Ukrainian refugees – another route is simply too burdensome, and that’s exactly what Russia wants.
“Our capacities are limited,” Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said this week, claiming that “the abuse of visa-free travel” in Serbia had fueled an increase in the number of asylum seekers. Austria, he said, received 56,000 such requests between January and August.
Spotlight on Serbia
Serbia has been increasingly at odds with the EU over its reluctance to turn away from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
EU diplomats are already frustrated that Serbia, an aspiring EU member, has not followed Brussels in sanctioning Russia. And now there are also fears that Belgrade is indirectly helping the Kremlin sow discord within the EU via a new influx of migrants – a tactic Russia is suspected of supporting elsewhere along the bloc’s borders.
During his visit to Belgrade, Schinas urged Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to adopt the EU visa policy – something Serbia has already committed to doing by the end of the year.
“It is not fair that the European Union has granted visa waiver to the Western Balkans and that Western Balkan countries grant visa waiver agreements to third countries that do not benefit from visa waiver with us,” Schinas said after his meeting with Vučić.
Serbia, he stressed, has responsibilities as a member of the great European family.
A Serbian official rejected any accusations that he facilitated Moscow’s tactics and defended the country’s visa policy.
The official highlighted the stricter conditions that Belgrade has already introduced for visa-free travelers to combat abuse, such as requiring such travelers to show proof of a paid round-trip ticket with a fixed return date.
“We will do everything to reduce these figures,” underlined the official. “We do not want to endanger our visa-free regime with the EU.”
Michael Spindelegger, director of the International Center for Migration Policy Development, said the migration route through Serbia was upsetting countries in the region.
“In addition to the Ukrainian refugee crisis, normal waves of migration have increased,” he said. “If the trend continues, Austria will see more asylum seekers arriving by the end of the year than in 2015 and 2016,” the peak of the EU’s migration crisis.
Smugglers have also used this route, diplomats said, expressing concerns about other new routes in the region, some of which pass through Turkey.
“Smugglers are always trying to find the weak points,” said Ilias Chatzis, head of the human trafficking and migrant smuggling section of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Smugglers follow opportunities, and they follow them very quickly when they present themselves. »
