Kosovo people need Serbian passports to travel to EU
The Pristina Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore reported on Monday that Kosovo would be exempted from the visa liberalization debate of the European Union foreign ministers, noting that the EU tacitly accepted that the inhabitants of Kosovo were Serbian citizens and that as such, they had the right to hold Serbian passports.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Monday, June 15, 2009
The daily reports that Swedish Ambassador to the EU Christian Danielsson has admitted that due to the divisions that exist between the EU member countries, there are certain limitations in respect to what the Union can do for Kosovo.
At the same time, the non-government organization European Stability Initiative (ESI) has called on the EU not to make pressure on Serbia to stop issuing passports for the inhabitants of Kosovo.
Kosovo would be part of the debate only in a segment dealing with ways to prevent Serbia from issuing biometric passports for the people of Kosovo, the daily noted, claiming that a number of diplomatic sources in the EU said that Belgrade had been demanded not to encourage Kosovo Albanians to seek Serbian passports.
The sources said that because of its five member countries that had not recognized Kosovo independence, the EU had not been able to put a clear condition before Serbia not to issue passports for the people in Kosovo, and at the same time, to demand from the country not to discriminate its citizens.
However, several technical demands have been put before Serbia which refer to the safety of the documents and which will make it more difficult for the Kosovo Albanians to obtain Serbian passports.
"We are very close to a solution of this problem," an unnamed EU diplomat told the daily Hoha Ditore, explaining that the solution implied that the people living in Kosovo would have to go to Belgrade to require and obtain new passports for which they would need original documents, a thing which was not easy for them to do.
