Overview of topical refugee and migration issues in South East Europe, presented by Mr. Jonas Widgren, Director of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Conference in Struga (Macedonia) on 14-15 September 2000

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, You are all gathered here as representatives of national parliaments of Council of Europe Member States, of Governments and of international organizations involved in seeking a settlement of one of the most complicated refugee and migration issues in the whole world, and the by far most complicated in Europe. When the Slavs came As a matter of fact, few regions in the world have, in a 3000 year retrospect, been so heavily affected by population movements as this very region. By the time the first known inflows to the Balkan region took place, with Tracians, Dacians, Pannonians, Liburnians, Illyrians and all the other tribes moving in, the whole world had no more citizens than what Western Europe has today. And at the period of the "Völkerwanderungen", starting at around 400 after Christ, Europe had only 100 million inhabitants. This was when the Slavs came down to the Balkans, from what is now central Ukraine, and by the year of 900 the settlement patterns of the various Slavic groups had stabilized. Maybe at that time there was a total of 10-15 million inhabitants on the Balkans. Basically, these groups of settlers from the North, the East and the South, came to virgin land in small groups, entering a very wide Balkan space.

2 One of the heaviest migration areas in the world But today, with a total of nearly 80 million inhabitants on the Balkan peninsula, and with about 100 inhabitants per square kilometre (as compared to 20 in for example my own country Sweden) the population density is considerable, with an annual average increase of nearly one per cent. This is thus a first explanatory note to the movements taking place during the last centuries: many widely differing people are living on a small space. And a second note, just therefore they left their countries in big numbers already 100 years ago, when of the 60 million Europeans who emigrated overseas some 8 million came from South East Europe. And again, from 1960 to 1974 they left in big numbers for economic reasons, this time for Europe, i.e. about 2 million "Gastarbeiter" and their families, moving from here to the North. And then we reach the present period, where population movements within and from the region have been generated by the dramatic changes in Europe: the previously communist States in the region becoming democratic through transition, a few of them being affected by transition without becoming democratic, and many of those separating from former Yugoslavia in addition becoming affected by violent wars, leading to death of a quarter of a million people and to massive population displacements caused by war. Indeed, since the second world war no other region in Europe has been affected by such massive population movements. According to our estimates, the migration flows in and from South East Europe have since 1990 encompassed a total of more than 10 million persons, of which only 2,5 million returned to their homes within less than one year’s residence in neighbouring or other European countries, nearly 5 million have emigrated permanently to other European or overseas countries and about 3 million are still in a kind of "stand-by" situation in another country somewhere in the region or close to the region, waiting to make the final decision to stay permanently or to return. This implies that about 15% of the population of the Balkan peninsula have been on the move since the political changes at the end of the 1980's, which is a very high percentage by international standards. Furthermore, there are lately considerable and increasing irregular transit movements through the region by third country nationals from the Middle East, Asia at large and to some extent Africa, heading further to the North of our continent, and requiring the inclusion of the region in a sustainable European regime to fight illegal immigration. The Border Guards of South East Europe last year apprehended 180,000 illegal migrants.

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Migration, security and stability closely inter-linked The issue of population displacements and migration flows on the Balkans indeed has to be considered in a wider European security perspective. When establishing sustainable security arrangements for this neuralgic part of Europe, like in 1996 the Dayton agreements and in 1999 the Stability Pact, the effects and potentials of past and future population displacements unavoidably will have to be taken into account. Movements from the states in the region not only affect the security situation on the Balkans itself, but also the one of Western Europe, and hence immediately involves EU and NATO security considerations. When a relatively small number of Albanians (some 30,000) in 1991 sought to enter Italy by boats, the Italian army placed troops in Albania to stop the outflow, and Italian police and customs still operate in Albania to cut the illegal boat traffic in the interest of all EU States. When 400,000 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1993 reached Austria and Germany, and these States requested pan-European burden-sharing, classical geopolitical tensions with respect to former Yugoslavia were revitalized in the EU framework. When Macedonia generously received hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Kosovo war only a bit more than one year ago, a host of fundamental issues relating to the whole future of the country risked to emerge, should the refugees not have decided themselves to return so unexpectedly and expeditiously in July. And if Vojvodina- and Transsylvania-Hungarians would increasingly be squeezed to leave in a hypothetical new process of ethnic cleansing, protest demonstrations of Hungarians will take place worldwide, maybe even claiming the need to revise the 1920 Trianon settlement relating to the borders of Hungary. And so forth. Migration and security in the Balkans form a single whole. Developments like these, relating to the inter-relationship between flows and security in the Balkans, can to some extent be predicted, on the basis of previous lessons. How to avoid further forced displacements? Three reasons behind the massive movements South East Europe constitutes, by definition, a unique patchwork of peoples, religions and languages. No borders of any Balkan nation can ever take these habitation patterns into account.

4 Multi-ethnic co-existence in peace is a mandatory constitutional prerequisite for nations in this region. All national borders here are, in a way, wrongly drawn but can never be made to correspond to ethnic or religious division lines. Whereas the ratio between „the majority people“ and „minority peoples“ in countries in Western Europe on average is 92 per cent to 8 per cent, the average ratio for the present nine States on the Balkans (the Turkey share thus not included), is 70 per cent to 30 per cent, ranging from 95/5 for Albania, to 60/40 for Serbia, and 55/45 for pre-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hence, ethnic habitation patterns is a major factor heavily influencing the decisions of people to move as a result of the conflicts. But there is also the economy factor. By 1985, the average GNP per capita for the communistruled states on the Balkans was about 1,500 USD (with Yugoslavia on the top), whereas it was about 5,000 USD in non-communist-ruled Greece. There was a large surplus of rural labour in all countries of the Balkans. However, as exit control was meticulous in all States but Greece and Yugoslavia, and since these two states consciously since 1965 had promoted labour emigration as an instrument for their economic development, only these two states had experienced mass emigration on economic grounds before the radical political changes on the peninsula. These radical changes have led to impoverishment in most of the States, creating heavy emigration pressures in some. With the lifting of communist exit control, about 800,000 Romanians, Bulgarians and Albanians all of a sudden left their countries in 1989-1992 to seek employment in Western Europe, some of them wrongly utilizing the asylum door of Western European States to obtain entry. Huge potentials for economically motivated mass movements are still there in the region, notably in Romania and in Serbia proper as well as in Albania and Kosovo (the latter with more than one fourth of the population abroad already before the armed conflict started to boil in the spring of 1998). But, obviously, a major factor behind the movements during the last decade has been the degree to which the potential of population movements has been exploited on political grounds. Certain leaders in the region have to a larger or smaller degree made use of population movements to obtain certain political goals. We have recently witnessed two of the two most conspicuous examples of flows generated on political grounds: ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina served the expansion and control ambitions of the leadership in Belgrade, as also did the recent very dramatic example of Kosovo, leading to huge displacements involving half its Albanian population.

5 Usually, migration experts consider that a mass exit situation exists when about 10 per cent of the population of a country leave in only two years. However, in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 per cent of the pre-war population left the country and an equal share is presently displaced inside Bosnia and Herzegovina. But – and this is a very positive note minority returns have taken on a considerable momentum this year. In the Kosovo case, more than 55 per cent of the Albanians left in 1999, of whom as much as 80 per cent returned only after a few months. As regards Albania, as much as 17% of the population have left during the last decade, on economic grounds and because of general anarchy. Thus, the issue of population displacements, of return and of the prevention of mass displacements should form an intrinsic part of any international efforts geared towards creating a stable security order on the Balkans. But generalizations as those I now have forwarded on the major features of forced refugee movements and voluntary economic migration within or from the region and are also dangerous, since such generalizations do not take the specifics, predicaments and potentials of each and every country in the region into account. How could these specifics be described in a Stability Pact perspective? Wide institutional differences between the countries The countries in the region which are partners to the Stability Pact constitute a very mixed conglomerate, in terms of population and geographical size, geopolitical considerations, institutional linkages to the Euro-Atlantic institutions, migration and refugee history etc. A standardized approach with regard to the implementation of the refugee and migration policy objectives as they are being formulated under the Pact Working Table I on Human Rights issues and Working Table III on Security Issues, is not possible and would even be counter-productive. Whereas Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia have been EU candidate countries for several years and are involved in membership preparations and negotiations, Turkey was granted candidate status in December 1999. We know that Slovenia and Hungary are much closer to membership than Bulgaria and Romania. We further know that the candidate countries (minus the newcomer Turkey) have obviously been receivers of EU Phare support for a long time, and for special reasons Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have, technically speaking, also received such support. Turkey and Greece have been NATO

6 members since NATO’s foundation, but Hungary is a new NATO member (and most other States in the region strive at NATO membership and have concluded PFP agreements). Greece is in its obvious capacity as EU and NATO member a contributing country to the process of the Stability Pact, but shares certain problems, also in the field of migration, with her non-EU neighbours. We know that Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have been created as independent States following the dissolution of former Yugoslavia. But we also know that Slovenia will in the foreseeable future become an EU member and that Croatia (following the recent political change in the country) will probably apply for membership soon. The latter is together with the forerunner Macedonia well ahead in discussions on the establishment of SAA agreements, but Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina will probably be granted the right to enter into negotiations only at a much later stage. Montenegro formally is a part of present Yugoslavia, but is still a beneficiary entity within the context of the Stability Pact, as is of course Kosovo, but Yugoslavia is, as you all know, excluded from the Pact as long as it is governed by the present regime. Maybe the forthcoming elections will bring about a change. So the institutional differences between all the States are indeed considerable. Also widely differing migration experience Let's now also take a quick look at the discrepancies between the countries in the region in terms of refugee and migration history and migratory patterns. Turkey is by far the biggest emigration country in the region, having experienced the outflow of about 1,3 million of her citizens to Western Europe during the last 20 years only. In fact, emigration from Turkey to Western Europe has been bigger after the immigration stoppage of the mid-1970's than before, during the massive guest-worker movements. In addition, about 2 million nationals of other countries could be estimated to have passed Turkey, and then through the Balkan route, to Western Europe during the last 10 years. In Greece emigration dried out already 15 years ago, but the country is the target of significant irregular migration and Greece hosts e.g. some 300,000 Albanians having arrived in an irregular fashion. Macedonia presently has a modest emigration rate of her own nationals but hosted an enormous number of the refugees during the Kosovo conflict. Macedonia also suffers from increasing irregular transit movements. Albania (also a major host country for refugees during the Kosovo conflict, still hosting some 4,000 Kosovo refugees) has become one of the biggest

7 emigration countries in the world, with never ending emigration pressures, in combination with massive illegal transit flows. Suffering Bosnia and Herzegovina has experienced the flight of 1,4 million of her originally 4,4 million citizens during the war and the return of only 0,4 million of them after the war and with still a huge number of IDPS. Recently, illegal migration of Iranians and Turks through the country and of Chinese from Serbia has grown exponentially. Croatia received 0,6 million Muslim and ethnic Croatian refugees during the Bosnia war, but experienced (or rather promoted) at the same time a large-scale emigration to Bosnia and Serbia of 200,000 Croatian citizens of Serbian origin. The new government in Croatia has promised the West to allow most of the ethnic Serbs the right to return. Croatia is not suffering from general emigration pressures. The same obviously holds true for Slovenia and Hungary and now also Bulgaria, whereas Romania is plagued by significant irregular emigration propensities. For that and other reasons, the two latter countries are the only EU candidate countries which are subject to visa obligations in all EU member states, as are in most EU States Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, but obviously not Slovenia and Hungary and notably not Croatia. And Yugoslavia hosts one of the biggest populations of internally displaced in the whole world, a total of 700,000. Serbia also has huge potentials for irregular migration. The work ahead Thus, the institutional as well as the refugee migration characteristics of the countries in the region vary considerably, and it would be counter-productive to apply a standardized approach in terms of seeking to meet the general and refugee and migration policy objectives of the Stability Pact. But still, general policy objectives have to be defined and the manifold institutional frameworks for dealing with security, population displacements, the return of refugees and the fight against illegal migration have to become properly adapted and productive enough to stabilize inter-state and inter-ethnic relations so that population displacements would not become the stumbling block for the full integration of the region into the Euro-Atlantic structures. We all hope that this Conference organized by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will contribute to this end.

8 Mr. Chairman, at the end I would in this spirit like to pay a general tribute to our host country, which in spite of big economic difficulties, was a major host of the Kosovo refugees last year and is now eagerly striving to make its migration and refugee regime compatible to EU States. The inter-governmental organization I am heading is fully supporting Macedonia in these endeavours, and ICMPD looks forward to working with the Macedonian colleagues in organizing two important migration policy meetings in this country this autumn (in October and November 2000), in close co-operation with Macedonia. I thank you for your attention.