EU: It's up to Serbia if visa-free regime will stay

BELGRADE, Oct 7 (Hina) - The European Parliament's rapporteur on visa liberalisation, Tanja Fajon, said on Sunday it depended on the Serbian authorities and its most responsible politicians whether Serbia would end up on the Schengen blacklist again, Serbian media reported.

"We did a lot together so that we would have a visa-free regime for Serbian citizens today and I hope nothing in the future will change that. But that mostly depends on the Serbian authorities and its most responsible politicians," the Slovenian MEP told Novi Sad's Dnevnik daily.

She said there was still no mechanism to temporarily suspend the visa-free regime but that there would be one by the end of the year because of the increasing number of false asylum seekers coming to the European Union from some countries, including Serbia.

Citing EU home affairs sources, Belgrade's Danas said no EU country had so far requested the reintroduction of visas for Serbia and Macedonia.

The chairman of the German parliament's home affairs committee, Wolfgang Bosbach, has urgently requested the re-examination of the visa-free regime for Serbia and Macedonia, saying an increasing number of people sought asylum not because of political persecution but to receive money from national welfare funds.

Die Welt reported last week that the number of asylum seekers from Macedonia and Serbia coming to Germany continued to grow because of social benefits that surpassed average wages in those two countries.