Protest march

Visa, no, thank you!

“Visa, forget about it!” and “Visa, no, thank you!”, were the slogans on the protest march organized by the international youth organizations AEGEE-Skopje, JEF Macedonia, supported by the Macedonian High-School Students’ Union, the Youth Education Forum, Balkan Idea and the Macedonian Scouts’ Federation. The protest day was carefully chosen to match the day of Berlin’s wall fall – 9th November.

Citing members of the European conventions for freedom of movement, the youth of Macedonia publicly and clearly expressed their revolt against the Shengen wall that the countries of our regions face, including Macedonia. The protest march started in front of the Government building and went on in front of the OSCE and the European Commission offices. 

Requests were addressed to the Macedonian government to complete its duties towards the European Union, and the Office of Europe was addressed requests for facilitation or abolishment of the visa regime which limits the freedom of movement, above all of young people from Macedonia.

The participants of the protest march did not manage to have a meeting with the European Commission representative Erwan Fouere, as he was very busy, but several days after the march news arrived from Brussels that the EU adopted a mandate for starting negotiations for facilitation of visa regime for Western Balkans. The negotiations for simplifying and facilitating the procedure for issuing visas shall start towards the end of November.

The European Commission has also expressed preparedness to exclude Macedonia from the additional measures, such as raising the price of visas, and to facilitate issuing visas for certain categories of people, such as students.