There are definitely no plans, in the EU or any member state, to reintroduce visa requirements for Serbs or Macedonians. Rather, there are ongoing negotiations within the EU regarding a tightly defined general safeguard clause. In this process the German Government has managed to ensure that the European Commission performs a key role. The idea is that visa free travel could be suspended for a maximum of six months only at the Commission’s proposal and under certain exceptional circumstances.

We should bear in mind that such a restriction of visa free travel would, for the most part, have unintended consequences: it is young people, companies and representatives of civil society who benefit most from visa free travel. All parties involved should resist any temptation to try to resolve such a sensitive and complex problem with simplistic solutions.