PRISTINA — Earlier than clocks chimed of their new visa-free relationship with the EU on New Yr’s Day, an off-the-cuff ballot of Kosovar college students within the capital produced a seemingly modest listing of dream locations.
Outdoors the school the place she research graphic design, Fatjona Hajdaraj stated she’d select Italy or Greece for the tradition. Naron Bllaca, a dentistry scholar, stated in all probability Austria or perhaps a Scandinavian nation. Enxhi Sada, a medical scholar, stated she and a pal had been eyeing a live performance in France. Rilind Berisha, a pharmaceutical scholar, stated he’d prefer to go to Teubingen, an idyllic German city on the foot of the Swabian Alps the place about 1-in-4 folks is a scholar on the native college.
”I need to see how they research there, what scholar life is like,” Berisha advised RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
As of January 1, holders of biometric Kosovar passports can journey visa-free for brief stays to all 27 nations within the largely borderless Schengen Space, the results of a 12-year ”dialogue” with the European Fee.
Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti described it on X, previously generally known as Twitter, as attaining ”equal standing to go to household or pursue academic, cultural & enterprise alternatives one quick flight away — one step out of isolation, one step nearer to [the European Union].
Whereas Kosovars are eager to journey — for all the explanations Kurti talked about — a sluggish economic system has meant that not most of the nation’s 1.8 million folks have the means to go to the EU. And the federal government, fearing a mass exodus of Kosovars looking for work overseas, is attempting to steer its residents, particularly younger folks, to remain at dwelling.
Low Salaries, Excessive Unemployment
One of many greatest obstacles going through Kosovars is financial. All the college students who spoke to RFE/RL in Pristina expressed concern about the price of touring. And they’re in all probability not alone.
Incomes per capita have risen by practically half up to now decade and the poverty charge is falling. The typical wage in Kosovo, nonetheless, continues to be simply 521 euros ($569) — lower than half that in EU laggards Bulgaria and Romania.
Even at two-decade lows, Kosovo nonetheless has among the highest official unemployment in Europe at 12.6 p.c, regardless of tens of hundreds of its residents emigrating every year. Official youth unemployment is even greater at 21 p.c.
”Though Kosovo’s progress has largely been inclusive, it has not been ample to offer sufficient formal jobs, notably for ladies and youth,” the World Financial institution concluded in its newest overview on Kosovo.
Many Kosovars have deserted the home labor market. Sanije Kadriu, a college graduate in economics, stayed dwelling to boost two youngsters as a result of she says wages had been low within the non-public sector and she or he could not discover a job within the public sector.
”A wage of 300 euros a month was nugatory to me,” she advised RFE/RL’s Balkan Service. ”The daycare for one youngster alone was 100 euros, and with such a small wage, I could not cowl my bills.”
Kadriu has been out of the labor power for greater than a decade now, she stated, and expects to spend her 50s unemployed, too.
In reality, greater than 60 p.c of working-age residents are economically inactive, which interprets into round 730,000 folks between 15 and 64 who’re unemployed, aren’t looking for a job, or have fallen off the unemployment rolls fully. Of that whole, 460,000 of them are girls.
Mind-Drain Fears
The EU known as visa liberalization a ”important milestone” and ”a recognition of the exhausting work that Kosovo has carried out” together with Kosovars’ sturdy help for EU integration. The bloc has additionally stated it was an opportunity for the edges to get higher acquainted. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has since gained recognition from over 110 nations.
As momentum accrues for nations comparable to Moldova, Ukraine, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to affix the EU, Kosovo stays only a ”potential candidate” for accession. Regardless of some progress the nation has made on reforms — a requirement for EU membership — Kosovo faces important obstacles to membership, particularly from enlargement skeptics throughout the EU and Brussels’ demand for Pristina and Belgrade to resolve their many points earlier than both can be a part of the bloc. To complicate issues additional, 5 EU member states — Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain — do not even acknowledge Kosovo as an unbiased state.
Whereas Kosovo’s authorities additionally acknowledges visa liberalization as a milestone, as January 1 neared, political and enterprise leaders turned more and more nervous about an unbridled rush for the exits from a rustic bedeviled by political instability and a runaway casual economic system, in addition to fallout from an ongoing battle for extra widespread worldwide recognition.
Prime Minister Kurti has urged his compatriots to ”respect the situations” and reminded them that EU visits are restricted to 90 days in any 180-day interval and that they don’t seem to be allowed to work throughout their keep. Kurti’s authorities has persistently pleaded with folks to not use the journeys to search for jobs within the EU.
These authorities pleas may be falling on deaf ears. There have been reviews suggesting that many Kosovars with jobs have been saving cash and trip days for the spring, with the hope of touring to EU nations to land a job or paving a path to staying overseas — even on the threat of working afoul of EU warnings towards violating the foundations of the brand new visa-free regime.
WATCH: Ranging from January 1, Kosovars not want visas to enter the Schengen Space. Among the many first who used the chance had been 50 winners of a Vienna tour lottery organized by Kosovo’s authorities.
Shedding a sizeable chunk of its workforce would deal a blow to even probably the most promising sectors in Kosovo, the place budding entrepreneurs have been coping with many years of mind drain that has been sapping the workforce.
Kosovars had been already a nation on the transfer, with remittances accounting for 17 p.c of Kosovo’s gross home product (GDP) in 2022, based on the World Financial institution. A broadly cited survey carried out in 2020 by the Group for Authorized and Political Research confirmed that 48 p.c of Kosovars wished to to migrate, an accelerating development since 2014.
Kosovo’s Growing Tech Sector
Like the federal government, an rising class of enterprise homeowners in Kosovo is raring to cease the hemorrhaging of the workforce.
One of the crucial dynamic sectors is data and communications know-how (ICT), the place 700 new corporations had been launched final yr to deliver the full to 1,950, versus simply 930 4 years earlier.
Fikret Murati is the proprietor of Speeex, a tech-focused enterprise service supplier he launched in 2016. The corporate now has places of work in six cities throughout Kosovo and employs about 2,000 folks with a median age of 29 and a median month-to-month wage of 1,200 euros — aggressive however commonplace for the sector.
A toddler of ethnic Albanian emigrants who was raised in Switzerland, Murati stated he thinks that dependable employers can not solely encourage younger folks to remain but in addition lure Kosovars again dwelling.
”I believe that if it affords them a safe job and alternatives for the long run, alternatives for improvement, it is not troublesome,” he advised RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
The entrepreneur seems to be taking a web page out of the textbooks of early U.S. tech start-ups with Speeex’s new places of work in Pristina providing prayer rooms and a kitchen, which Murati says may be very well-liked among the many staff.
Aldo Baxhaku, the general public communications officer at native networking affiliation STIKK, insisted that the ICT sector and its baked-in benefits make it ”the one sector that has the potential to battle the emigration development” in Kosovo.
”The [ICT] sector is rising everywhere in the world,” Baxhaku stated, ”however Kosovo has this benefit of younger folks — 65 p.c [of the population] is below 30 years outdated. Which means you have got potential.”
To capitalize on that potential, Baxhaku and different high-tech entrepreneurs stated that Kosovo ought to choose a lane in one of many fast-moving sectors — synthetic intelligence, cybersecurity, or software program improvement — and keep it up.
Their hope is that whereas Kosovars could stay pissed off with their second-tier standing throughout the EU, the lure of visa-free journey — and dealing overseas — might be diminished as their careers take off at dwelling.
Written by Andy Heil primarily based on reporting by RFE/RL Balkan Service correspondents Arton Konushevci and Doruntina Baftiu