The troubled economic Oda: Many red tape and humiliation towards businesses during obtaining Shengen visa

Kosovo's Economic Oda voices concern over the local business community's complaints about the bureaucratic and derogatory procedures they are facing during the Shengen visa application.

Despite the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, which envisions opening the new perspective for Kosovo businesses, the latter cannot use it because of the visa-taking procedure.

“If a Kosovo business applies to a visa, in the first row it should wait two, three or four months for the term, and after the appointment of the term a host of documents which have the cost both in time and in financial terms and, above all, are required to reveal even the largest secrecy of the company's financial situation”, OEK points out.

OEK recalls that many documents are needed for an application, and no one guarantees whether to be equipped with visas.

Now in 2016-2017, the same companies are either rejected with banal reasoning or given a certain daily visa, all of which questions the partnership promoted between Kosovo and the European Union. With this approach of the European embassies accredited in Pristina in the face of the local business committee's demands, we are presenting the SAA as a beautiful home with an attractive architecture, but without an opening door and exit”, the communiqué says.

Kosovo's Economic Oda calls on European embassies in Kosovo to show flexibility, professionalism and to support Kosovo's economic development by empowering the private sector in permanent partnership with companies from the European Union.

The local business does not deserve such ghettoism when it is known that they are carrying political, social, integration and, above all, those who improve Kosovo's image through entrepreneurship and their” activities, the communiqué concludes.