Passport woes

EVERY summer millions of young folk explore Europe using cheap, continent-wide rail and bus passes. Thanks to a new visa-free deal, more of those strumming guitars on the Ramblas in Barcelona or the Spanish Steps in Rome should soon hail from parts of the former Yugoslavia—but not yet from all of the western Balkans. That is creating political tensions.

For years visas have been a neuralgic issue in the region. So a recent recommendation by the European Commission to scrap visas for Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians from the start of 2010 should be good news. If it takes effect, it will give people in these countries free access to the Schengen area of 25 countries, including almost all EU members plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.

Before the wars of the 1990s Yugoslavs did not need visas to travel to the rest of Europe. Today it is said that 70% of students at Belgrade University have never been abroad. For years EU foreign ministers have been berated about this by their Balkan colleagues. Their answer has often been that, if it were up to them, all would be fine. But interior ministers, fearful of organised crime and drug- and people-trafficking, refuse to agree. The counter-argument has been that criminals will hardly wait in line for visas they can buy or forge, so visa rules merely punish ordinary folk and legitimate businessmen.

To achieve visa abolition has taken a huge amount of work, the introduction of modern biometric passports being only a first step. Already the political fallout of the decision is being felt. In the Balkans visas and passports are not a mere technicality, but the stuff of high politics. And the commission’s decision means that Bosnians, Albanians and Kosovars feel left behind.

There is particular bitterness within Bosnia. Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) cannot travel freely, but Bosnian Croats can because they have long used Croatian passports, for which visas were abolished some years ago; Bosnian Serbs may now apply in large numbers for Serbian passports. All this weakens Bosnia’s fragile statehood. It is outrageous, say Bosniaks, that a fugitive like Ratko Mladic, indicted for murdering some 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995, is now in theory able to travel freely on a Serbian passport whereas the relatives of his victims cannot.

Still, Bosnians and Albanians know that it is only a matter of time before they too qualify for visa-free travel. Not so the Kosovars, who have yet to start working on the issue with the EU. Matters are complicated by the fact that, because Serbia does not recognise Kosovo’s independence, it cannot refuse to give Serbs and Albanians living there its new biometric passports. But as part of the deal on visa-free travel for Serbia, the EU excludes them.

Hence a Serbian passport for somebody in Kosovo will be worth less than one for a Bosnian. And if Serbia and Croatia can hand out passports in Bosnia, why should not Albania issue passports to Kosovar Albanians? Some people may even start to ask why the Albanian nation should be split between two states. Bureaucratic anomalies can have mighty consequences.