Serbia introduces visas to several countries in 2022 due to EU pressure

Friday, December 30, 2022

Starting from January 1, 2023, citizens of India and Guinea-Bissau will no longer be permitted to enter Serbia without obtaining a travel visa first.

The country has put the visa-free travel arrangements with these two countries to an end, which up until December 31 permit holders of passports issued in India and Guinea-Bissau to enter Serbia without a visa and stay up to 30 days.

These two are not the first visa-free agreement that Serbian authorities have scraped, as previously, visas to Serbia were introduced for passport holders of Tunisia and Burundi.

As of November 20, 2022, travellers from these two countries can no longer enter Serbia visa-free, but instead they will have to apply for one at the Serbian embassy in their country.

In the following weeks and months, Serbia might introduce visas for more non-European Union countries, in a bid to align its visa policy with that of the EU, including for Turkish citizens, Belarussians, and even Russians.

In 2022, since Russia started the military invasion of Ukraine, Serbia has been continuously under pressure to align its policies with those of the EU, including the visa policy, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

Many people from the countries Serbia had a visa-free agreement until recently, and of those with which there is still an arrangement in place, have used Serbia as a route to reach the EU countries and illegally stay there.

Data show that arrivals from Türkiye to Serbia alone, have increased from 1,653 to 6,186. While the number of Cubans and Indians increased from 36 to 339, and from 557 to 4,469, respectively.

In line with these increases, 2.5 per cent of the total of the illegal border crossings detected in the Western Balkan route were citizens of Türkiye, Tunisia, India, Cuba, and Burundi.

EU officials and the Member States have urged Serbia several times throughout the year to align its policy with that of the EU.

Serbia has to adapt its visa practice to the EU if it wants to become an accession candidate, the Minister of Interior of Germany, Nancy Faeser, had said in October, after data by the EU border agency showed that in September alone 19,160 people were detected illegally travelling to the EU through the Western Balkan.

The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, hadn’t excluded the possibility of the EU authorities suspending the visa-free agreement with Serbia, if the latter does not scrap the visa-free arrangements it has with some third countries.

Serbia’s current visa-free list now includes of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Suriname, and Türkiye.

For many of them visa-free entry to Serbia is “a gift” by the Serbian authorities for not recognizing the independence of Kosovo.

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