It is a great pleasure for me to be here Belgrade and to be hosted by our Serbian friends. In fact, Serbia is the very first EU candidate country that I’m visiting in my new capacity as Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship and I would like to thank our hosts for their excellent hospitality.
At our meeting, we discussed an array of important issues from the Migration and Securityportfolio and the progress made by our Western Balkans partners in the framework of their EU accession agendas.
Specifically, we had a very constructive discussion on:
– the fight against terrorism, focusing on the phenomenon of foreign fighters,
– visa liberalisation,
– trafficking in human beings,
– and fight against trafficking in firearms.
With regard to visa liberalization, I am happy to say that it remains one of the core achievements of the Western Balkan countries; it has strengthened the rule of law and increased people-to-people contacts.
But the year 2013 saw a considerable influx of persons who travelled visa-free to the EU and then abused asylum procedures. 2014 may become even worse. Therefore, we need immediate action from each government to reduce asylum abuse associated with visa-free travel.
The governments have implemented several reforms to tackle this phenomenon: they stepped up border controls and cooperation with the EU, prosecuted facilitators of irregular migration and organised media campaigns for citizens.
But governments need to do more. They need to tackle high youth unemployment; they also need to integrate vulnerable populations, like the Roma.
Overall, I am pleased to say that progress has been made on many rule of law-related reforms across the region over the past year. But again, more needs to be done.
For example, more efforts should be made on the fight against organised crime and corruption. Moreover, the operational results, the institutional developments and the legislative changes that have been achieved thus far, require continuous political commitment in order to keep the reform process on-track.
However, from today’s discussions, I am pleased to report that all Ministers present expressed their clear commitment for continuing the reforms and bringing their countries closer to the EU.
I would like to congratulate our Western Balkan partners on their hard work and I look forward to our close collaboration in the coming months and years.