Balkans: Vis-à-vis de la libre circulation

La plupart des citoyens des Balkans sont encore confrontés à des mesures strictes concernant l’octroi de visas lorsqu’ils souhaitent se rendre en Europe, écrit Risto Karajkov  dans Transitions Online.

A fairly typical Balkan story about visas goes like this. At the end of June 2005, members of a folkdance group from Bitola, Macedonia, went to the British Embassy in Skopje to apply for visas for some 45 people. The ensemble had been invited to the prestigious Llangollen folk festival in Wales. 

An experienced and well-known group, they had made preparations to perform as they had done at many other international festivals before. They invested heavily in new costumes and had set aside some 2,000 euros for visa fees. 

When they arrived at the embassy in the 40-degree noon heat, the consular clerk asked them to dance. She wanted to make sure that they were genuine. 

In the end, not everyone got their visas. The choreographer, the first clarinetist, the harmonica player, and several of the dancers did not. Perhaps they just didn’t meet the clerk’s artistic standards.

The local media got onto the story fairly fast. The embassy at first said that it did not comment on visa procedures. But as the media turned up the heat, the ambassador eventually had to provide some sort of explanation.

Ambassador Robert Dickson told the media be believed there had been a « misinterpretation » of what actually happened. The clerk in question had not asked the group to dance, he said, only to demonstrate a dance position. 

Instead of traveling to Wales, the band performed a protest dance in front of the embassy. The clerks thus saw the show twice, for free.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.