Professional Drivers of Serbia Announce Protest and Blockade of Freight Border Crossings for April 14

Board Member of the business association International Transport Serbia, Dusan Nikolic, said today that a decision has been made to block freight border crossings on April 14, due to the unresolved issue of the length of stay of professional drivers in Schengen Agreement countries.

He told Beta news agency that full implementation of the Entry/Exit System (EES) and the 90/180 rule is scheduled for April 10, which means that truck drivers cannot stay in Schengen countries longer than 90 days within a six-month period.

We have left a sufficiently long period for the protest to be canceled if a solution is found in the meantime in talks with the European Commission (EC), Nikolic said.

He added that if, starting April 10, trucks begin to be confiscated on a larger scale and drivers who have exceeded the permitted period of stay in Schengen Agreement countries are deported to their countries of origin, the protest will begin even earlier.

He pointed out that the Transport Community will try to coordinate the date of the blockade with drivers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that if Montenegro does not participate in the protest, exits toward that country and North Macedonia will be blocked.

Nikolic said that Croatia’s proposal to extend the stay of drivers from other countries if they transport goods for companies in that country is good, but that it requires lengthy amendments to legal regulations.

At the beginning of October 2025, the EU introduced the EES system, which automatically registers the entry and exit of drivers from a particular country at the border, and their status was also equalized with tourists, because within six months they can spend a maximum of 90 days in the Schengen zone, which has effectively halved their working time.

The EC announced changes to the visa regime at the end of January this year, after a four-day protest by drivers from Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, but a concrete solution to the problem has not yet been adopted. The trial period for the EES and the 90/180 rule lasts until April 10, and they were introduced, as the EU explained, to prevent the entry of migrants.

Before the introduction of that system, the control of the length of stay of truck drivers was carried out through passport stamps and was not strict.

PU Međunarodni Transport Beograd

European Commission

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Dusan Nikolic

professional drivers

protest

stay in the Schengen zone

permits

EES system