An Agreement Not To Facilitate Visa Granting

From closed ones to isolated societies
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The so-called “visa facilitation” agreement
between the European Union and Albania
came into force some months back.
This agreement foresees an easing of the
travel procedures of Albanian citizens to
different EU member countries. When perceived,
this agreement was genuinely considered
as a means of easing up on the complicated
procedures to acquire visas, targeting,
in particular, the students, professorship,
business community, journalists, local officials,
as well as other citizens who present
solid and credible reasons for traveling to
EU member countries. This agreement could
very well have constituted an important
move to break down the walls of isolation
thrown up by these visas, not only for Albania,
but for all societies of the Balkan countries.
However, this is an agreement that has
merely remained on paper. The Consulates
of the EU member countries in Tirana continue
to implement the same complicated
procedures of refusal, often quite offensive.
According to the agreement, the time period
to grant or refuse a visa cannot exceed ten
days, but if you apply for a visa in any of the
EU countries’ consulates in Tirana you will
find that it takes at least four times more that.
M.L, who applied for a visa to attend a conference
in Brussels during the first week of
April, received a reply from the respective
consulate that she may expect an answer to
her application in the first week of June. The
agreement foresees multi-entrance visas of
up to five years validity, but so far the Italian
Consulate is the only one that issues up
to two year visas, and this is not due to this
Agreement between the EU and Albania, but
because of a bilateral agreement. Following
the signing of this agreement with the EU
there has been a number of highly cynical
cases, such as that of an Albanian researcher
who applied for a visa to enter an EU member
country and he was issued a three-day
visa. Cynically speaking it did not stop here.
Due to flight delays, this individual was compelled
to stay over an extra day in the
Schengen zone, but without a visa. Another
professor of the Tirana University was
stopped from delivering lectures in a
neighboring country because the respective
Consulate turned down his application for a
visa without providing any explanation at all.
Out of at least one hundred students at the
Economics Faculty of the University of
Elbasan, only one student has traveled to an
EU member country. Another western consulate
granted another researcher three one
month visas during these last three months,
all with only one entrance. This agreement
foresees that when you already have a
Schengen visa, your next visa can be of
longer validity. In the above case, the researcher
had seven Schengen visas, but the
consulate continued to issue him only one
month visas, which cost him fifty Euros each
time, even though the agreement stipulates
that visa tariffs should also be reduced.
There are dozens and dozens of similar
cases which all indicate that the agreement
signed between the EU and Albania has
failed to function.
This is now a reality that everyone is fully
aware of. It is so ironic when you think, for
example, that North Korea’s citizens can
travel without visas to nineteen different
countries of the world, while Albanian citizens
can only enter thirteen. But the issue of
visas and the wall built up through these visas
is not only for the Albanians.
Balkan Governments have done a great
deal of joint lobbying in Brussels to try and
lower, even slightly, that wall devised via
visas and it appears that some progress has
been made. But the reality shows the opposite;
the agreement between Brussels and the
Balkan countries has not functioned. Balkan
societies found themselves against yet another
wall, the wall created by visas that introduces
isolation. And isolation has quite a
shocking history in this part of the world.
Look! In a show of support for the socalled
democratic forces in Serbia, in relation
to the elections of this week, Brussels
used the wall created by visas, twice. First,
seventeen member countries announced they
would lift the tax payment on visas for Serb
citizens. Secondly, European Commission
Vice President Jacques Barrot, in charge of
Justice, Freedom and Security, officially presented
in Belgrade the Roadmap on visa liberalization
with Serbia. This is an effort by
Brussels to try and impede the so-called nationalists
from coming to office in Serbia.
But, in this analysis, it is not the context that
is important – parliamentary elections in Serbia
– but the means with which Brussels is
attempting to assist the democratic and pro-
European forces. And this instrument is –
smashing through the isolation by liberalizing
visa requirements.
Balkan societies were once very isolated.
Due to this isolation or self-isolation, as was
the case of Albania, state economies were
ruined, individual’s values and freedoms and
those of the society were destroyed. Due to
the isolation, societies under dictatorships
were distorted and developed as closed societies.
In 1990, the West identified closed
societies as the primary and fundamental
problem of post-communist transition. It was
an exceptionally brilliant idea and a colossal
investment of the West to achieve open
societies in the former communist countries.
So, after about two decades, the Balkan societies,
that can no longer be regarded as
closed ones,