Svetlana Seferovic gets a Dutch holiday
Young Serbs are looking forward to EU travel now that the Netherlands has dropped its opposition to scrapping visa requirements for Serbia.
"No more humiliation," said Svetlana Seferovic a 33-year-old ballet
teacher from Belgrade who has just been granted a visa for a holiday in the
Netherlands after several nerve-racking weeks.
For many young Serbs the Exit festival, which takes place every July in the Serbian town of Novi Sad, is their only contact with the rest of Europe.
Two-thirds of young Serbs have never travelled abroad because it is so difficult to get a visa.
During the four days of Exit, Novi Sad is the centre of the world, with international artists appearing in an old fort. It also offers young Serbs the chance to meet their European peers.
Exit began seven years ago as a demonstration against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. Music as well as debates were organised where young people could vent their frustration about the nationalism, xenophobia, censorship and oppression in their country. A few months later, Milosevic's regime fell.
Inspired by the optimism engendered by the fall of the regime, the organisers decided to continue with Exit and create a festival with a regional character.
Seven years later, Exit has kept its idealistic character. In 2007 the organisers ran a campaign aimed at lifting the visa requirements so that young Serbs travel more easily to EU countries.
(Photo AFP)
Exit festival is gateway to Europe for young Serbs
Documents had to be translated, employer's statements produced, insurance arranged and a Dutch host had to be found who was willing to put up a financial guarantee.
"If I hadn't gotten the visa, I would have been 200 euro out of pocket, and I earn 350 euro a month," said Seferovic.
Last month's decision to waive the EU visa requirement for Serbs, Montenegrans and Macedonians starting January 2010 is a godsend for many Serbs. The summer in particular saw long queues of people like Seferovic with their files outside the embassies of popular countries like Greece and Germany in Belgrade.
Dutch opposition
The visa requirement for Schengen countries was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s when Yugoslavia descended into civil war. Until then, Yugoslavians had been free to travel. When the war ended, the restrictions remained. Anyone without a job or not studying was almost certainly turned down. As a result, around 70 percent of Serbian students has never left the country. In polls, 30 percent of them say they want to emigrate.
Seferovic said she realised the EU's restrictive visa policy towards Serbia was mainly an economic measure. "The last to leave the country could have turned off the lights. The country would have been empty" if Serbs had been free to travel before. But to her it always felt like punishment for a war she was never involved in.
The Netherlands opposes normalising ties with Belgrade because it says Serbia is still not fully cooperating with the UN Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague (ICTY). In June, Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen agreed to ease visa restrictions for Serbia, but he continues to resist the signing of a so-called stabilisation and association agreement between the EU and Serbia, the first step towards EU membership.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has spent the past few days travelling through the region trying to make clear that the liberalisation is mainly technical. Countries are only considered for the visa waiver programme if their population records are in order, if they use biometric passports and have secure border controls to counteract organised crime and smuggling.
But for the people of the region it is political. Freedom to travel is a privilege offered to some ex-Yugoslavians and not to others, they say. Slovenia is an EU member and part of the Schengen area. Croatians no longer need visas either because Croatia is a candidate country for EU membership. Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro will join the 'white Schengen list' on January 1, 2010, but Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former Serbian province of Kosovo will not; Albania too must wait.
'An insult to Bosnian Muslims'
Bosnian Muslims have reacted with disappointment and anger. Bosnian Croatians often have both a Bosnian and Croatian passport. Bosnian Serbs can try and obtain a Serbian passport, making it easy for them to travel to EU countries. The Bosnian Muslims are the only ones left behind in their "ghetto", as Thursday's papers put it.
The Green group in the European parliament has asked for a debate about Bosnia's position. According to party leader Daniël Cohn-Bendit, the EU's visa policy towards Bosnia is an insult to "the group which suffered most during the war".
The European Commission's recommendation also causes a problem for Serbia. The former Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Serbia does not recognise its independence but most EU countries do. Now that Serbia is on the 'white Schengen list' and Kosovo is not, Serbia will have to set up border controls. According to nationalist parties in the Serbian parliament, this would be a de facto acceptance of Kosovar independence, something they do not want.
Ballet teacher Seferovic is sad for the Bosnians and Kosovars because this "condemns them to their own country" for even longer. "Confinement and isolation are the best way of making sure positive change doesn't take place."
