DJELIC: Serbia not to allow abolition of vise-free regime

(Bozidar Djelic)

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for EU Integration Bozidar Djelic stated today that Serbia would not allow the visa-free regime to be abolished and announced formation of an inter-group whose task would be to monitor the application of the visa abolition agreement.

- In order to avoid any risk of endangering or abolishing that benefit for the citizens of Serbia, we are going to form an inter-group to monitor the application of the visa abolition agreement - he said to the press in Belgrade.

He said that, at the proposal of Serbia, Germany and Belgium had canceled the fee they were paying to people who had emigrated and were waiting to be granted asylum.

- There were people who were going to Germany and knew they would not be granted asylum, but they went there to get that money. Serbia has already managed to cut the number of applications for asylum in Germany in half over the past three months - he said and added that asylum in Germany had been asked by about 10,000 people in 2010, but that most of them had been rejected.

He also added that Belgium had, at Serbia's request, canceled social allowances for the people seeking asylum.

Djelic stated that Sweden, which received the largest number of applications for asylum next to Belgium and Germany, was specific because it had a long tradition of asylum granting, but that it had not granted almost any asylum.

- If someone tries to emigrate to Sweden, he or she will not get the status of a political emigrant because the emigrants from the country (Serbia), which will most likely obtain the status of an EU candidate, cannot seek political asylum, while economic asylum does not even exist - he said.

Djelic underlined that Serbia would not allow a small group of people to endanger the freedom of all and added that the EU was expected to accept the requests of certain member countries to introduce certain mechanisms of protection for the Schengen agreement signatory states.