Dear President Macron,

We want to congratulate you on your re-election! Your victory comes at an important moment for France, Europe and the world. While in the coming months and years you will be rightly preoccupied with concerns and well-being of people of France, eyes of the world are once again set upon France to lead the world in these difficult times.

Kosovo’s visa liberalization dialogue has entered its 10th year. As such, this process has been lasting longer than the visa liberalization process of ALL Western Balkans countries put together, and then multiplied by two. Putting it differently, Croatia’s entire accession process from candidate status to full membership took less than Kosovo’s visa liberalization process.

From the onset Kosovo’s visa liberalization process was set for hardship. Initially, Kosovo’s plea for the launch of visa liberalization dialogue was adamantly declined. We, the citizens of Kosovo, gazed with despair as our fellows from the region rejoiced at their right to move freely across the EU. And when the moment finally came in 2012 to launch the visa liberalization process, Kosovo was handed a roadmap with twice as many criterias then other Western Balkans countries. Despite it, in the course of the next six years Kosovo met all visa liberalization criterias. This was formally confirmed in July 2018, and then again multiple times by the European Commission and the European Parliament. Continuous calls to the Council of the EU to end Kosovo’s isolation have been fruitless. 

The tale of fading EU visa liberalization promise has been juxtaposed with Kosovo’s democratic blossoming. Last year, Kosovo re-confirmed its democratic maturity with exemplary elections and smooth transition of power. Since then, Kosovo has been making steadfast progress across all fronts. Kosovo’s effort in the fight against corruption and organized crime have been noted by Transparency International. In its latest report, Kosovo made the biggest historical annual improvement. By the same token, Kosovo made biggest the historical annual improvement, and the highest ranking ever, in the quality of its democracy, according to the latest report by the Freedom House. In this light, it came as no surprise when a few days ago Reporters Without Borders recorded the highest Kosovo ranking in the last ten years. In a nutshell, our country is today freer and more democratic than ever before. This is also partly the reason why last year Kosovo recorded second lowest number of asylum seekers in the EU compared to other countries of the region, according to Eurostat.

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