Tearing Down the Schengen Wall

Bora ISAKU, Anxhela HAXHI

Abstract The end of the visa requirement was greeted as evidence that the EU considered the Western Balkans part of Europe. The scope of this paperwork is the estimation of the visa liberalisation effects on the Western Balkan countries and also the estimation of the challenges that accompanied the process. This study tells about the story of visa liberalisation in return for reforms – a new EU policy that was first tried in the Western Balkans and has become a foreign policy tool in its own right. Through econometrical tests we tried to estimate the liberalisation effects stripped of the impact of the financial crises. The objective of this analyses is not that to look into the internal mechanics of the growth of national economies, elasticity or positions in income distribution, and this might be considered as a limitation for further econometric analyses, which can be fulfilled by the following studies.
Keywords Schengen, EU, Balkans, integration process, economic development
JEL classification C13, C23, F2
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