Visa-free Regime or Non-visa-free Regime: Is That the Question?

Depuis la partition de la Yougoslavie et ce jusqu’en 2009, un visa était nécessaire aux ressortissants serbes pour pouvoir voyager en Union Européenne. En 2009, comme partie intégrante de son processus d’accès au statut de candidate à l’UE, la Serbie a obtenu la libéralisation du régime des visas en échange de l’harmonisation d’une majeure partie de ses politiques aux standards européens. Depuis, le nombre de demandeurs d’asile originaires de Serbie a augmenté dans les pays membres de l’UE. Ces personnes, qualifiées de « faux-demandeurs d’asile» par les politiciens et  medias serbes, “lažni azilanti” en serbe, et décriés par l’UE comme « abusant de la liberté de mouvement », sont utilisés comme prétexte pour la mise en place de nouvelles lois restrictives sous la constante menace de la réintroduction du système des visas.

[article en anglais]

From the breakdown of Yugoslavia and until 2009, the Serbian were requires a visa to travel to the EU, but in 2009, in the process of approaching the candidate status and in exchange for harmonizing a great deal of its policies with the EU, Serbia entered a visa-free regime for its citizens’ travel to the EU. Since then, the number of people from Serbia, seeking asylum in the EU member states increased. Those persons, so-called false asylum seekers, “lažni azilanti” in Serbian, by the Serbian politicians and media and, portrayed by the EU as “abusing the freedom of movement”, are used as a pretext for the implementation of new restrictive laws under pressure of the reintroduction of visa-regime.

Increasing pressure from the EU: the planned creation of a suspensive mechanism of the visa-free regime

The rapporteur on visa liberalization for the EU, Tanja Fajon, announced that the EU Commission and Council may adopt a mechanism for the suspension of the visa-free regime[1]. This measure may be voted on after the summer and would suggest that governments and citizens should participate in the ‘struggle’ against the increasing number of so-called false asylum seekers, “lažni azilanti” in Serbian, applying in western EU countries.

Ms. Fajon also declared that this mechanism wouldn’t be only for Balkan countries but for all third-countries that recently got the liberalization of the visa regime. She sees two reasons to rush this process. First, the economic crisis in the EU might increase EU citizens’ fear of having their jobs stolen by non-EU citizens, and second, the EU doesn’t want to open its doors if it doesn’t maintain any control over the process.

How will this system work?

If an EU member state wishes to reintroduce the visa regime for people coming from a third country, the proposal will be examined by the EU commission and will be adopted if agreed to by the majority (modification of the regulation 539/2001). Then, this third-country would see its visa-free regime suspended for 6 months, and this period may be extended once for 9 more months. After this length of time, the EU could decide to either abandon the visa regime, or to add this country to the blacklist and permanently suspend the visa-free regime.

Serbia and Macedonia are the first targeted countries, in the words of Ms. Fajon, if the number of persons from Serbia and Macedonia seeking asylum in the EU doesn’t decrease.

The legitimization of restrictive measures made in the EU.

The threat of the reintroduction of the visa regime with EU is not new. Almost immediately after they obtained the liberalization (Dec 2009), the EU put pressure on the Serbian and Macedonian governments (March 2010)[2]. However, it seems that this measure doesn’t involve only governments in its so-called false asylum seekers-hunt, but also citizens. The responsibility for guarding the doors of the “Fortress Europe” is shifted from the EU to the neighboring countries, and now increasingly to civil society. This policy divides society into two categories: ‘normal’ citizens who see their freedom of movement reduced because of the second category, ‘the guilty ones’ or so-called ‘false asylum seekers’. This kind of division, created in the discourses of the political elite but widely spread by the media, is dangerous since it is a call for civil society to check, control, discriminate and if necessary punish by preventive measures a range of its population, suspected of seeking asylum in the EU, for fear of losing their rights.

This is another demonstration of the externalization of the EU migration policies; in the case of Serbia and Macedonia, to control the borders and to prevent people with whom the EU doesn’t want to deal with from entering the EU were conditions for the liberalization of the visa regime, and more generally, a condition for candidacy for EU membership. Pressure is put on the state and on civil society in a kind of guiltless process. The reproduction of this process at every level of society has repercussions for the Roma community as it creates a syllogistic fallacy[3] and generates hatred and resentment toward them. Moreover, the threat of the reintroduction of the visa regime is a hypocritical abstraction since the legal mechanism doesn’t exist (yet) and nobody knows when the European council and parliament will amend it.

Real or not, this threat permitted the government to legitimize the implementation of new restrictive measures by the Serbian authorities toward people suspected of wishing to seek asylum in the EU. Since the regulation governing in detail the manner of exercising police powers by the border police officers and duties of the persons crossing the border[4], the border police can ask for, in addition to travel documents, documents legitimating the purpose of the trip[5], and eventually, if one judges that the exit conditions aren’t totally fulfilled, to prevent a person from leaving the country. As punishment for those who had returned to Serbia because they didn’t get refugee status, the Serbian government announced it could temporarily confiscate their passports[6]. What a paradox! Under pressure from the defender of the free-circulation of capital, the Serbian government implements discriminative measures restricting  the freedom of movement of a category of the population in order to preserve this same fundamental right for the rest of its citizens. Furthermore, it encourages anti-Roma speeches and acts against this easily targeted scapegoat, thus avoiding any questioning of the restrictive EU policies themselves.