ONLY a few years ago, politicians in the European Union, and in the poor and war-ravaged countries in the continent’s south-east, felt that between them they were creating a virtuous circle. With EU help, poor Balkan lands would improve their governance and streamline their economies; in due course they would be rewarded with EU entry. Thanks to all that, people in poor places would have less reason to move to Europe’s rich north; in various ways, the EU was coming to them.
Now that virtuous circle, if it ever really existed, is badly frayed. People from the Balkans are once again heading north, legally or otherwise, because they have given up waiting for the situation in their own countries to improve.
The problem feels especially acute in Kosovo, the territory for which NATO went to war in 1999. With unemployment high, and political life deeply corrupt, people of all classes dream of escape. But Kosovo is the only place between Portugal and Ukraine where a visa is still needed for travel into the Schengen zone, the hard core of the EU.
Recently, says Lulzim Peci, who runs KIPRED, a think-tank in Pristina,…