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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

All Serbian citizens illegally residing in EU will be returned to Serbia

Belgrade, 11 March 2010

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic said today that visa liberalisation for Serbian citizens does not include the right to asylum and the right to live and work in the EU.

File photo of Ivica Dacic

Author: Tanjug

Dacic said at a Serbian parliament session, where he revealed a set of bills on confirming international agreements on police cooperation and readmission, that everybody who is residing illegally in the EU will be brought back to Serbia, in line with the readmission agreement.

He explained that citizens from southern Serbia who left to go to Belgium and Sweden to seek political asylum will clearly not get asylum and will be returned to Serbia. He added that those are some 400 persons, mostly Albanians and Roma, who asked for asylum in Belgium and some 500 persons who asked for asylum in Sweden.

Requests for asylum in Belgium and Sweden increased significantly after visa liberalisation for citizens of Serbia and Macedonia, Dacic said and voiced the hope that this will not harm the visa-free regime with the EU.

Macedonia and Serbia will investigate if there are elements of crime, since organised departures of those persons were always made with the same bus lines.

The First Deputy Prime Minister said that Serbia will be cooperative in resolving the status of persons illegally residing in EU countries.

Dacic said that the states that submitted the request will bear the costs while these costs will be borne by Serbia only in some cases.

In 2009, there were 2,191 readmission requests sent to the Serbian authorities, and Serbia gave a positive response in 1,423 cases, while there was no proof that those other persons are Serbian citizens, he said.

In the first two months of this year a total of 478 readmission requests for the return of persons illegally residing in the EU were submitted, of which 304 received a positive response and 156 a negative response from Serbia, while 18 persons are in the process of being checked, he said.

He recalled that the agreement between Serbia and EU on readmission came into force on 1 January 2008.

Serbia signed special protocols on readmission with Slovenia, France, Italy and Hungary, while it is in the process of negotiations with Germany, Estonia, Great Britain, Malta, Slovakia and the Benelux countries.