Africa-Press – Gambia. When planning to travel abroad, citizens of Kosovo can only choose their neighbouring countries among European ones; after travelling farther, they are obliged to apply for a visa at first.Kosovo’s passport has a visa-free and visa-on-arrival score of 41, according to the Henley Passport Index, which ranks 199 passports in worldwide countries, taking into account the number of destinations their holders can access without a visa, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
The Henley Passport Index shows that Kosovo has the worst passport in European Union in terms of visa-free and visa-on-arrival scores, while it permits its holders to visit only Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, among European ones, without being required to have a visa at first.
Among the destinations that holders of Kosovo’s passport are eligible to visit without a visa include:
Authorities in Kosovo are continuously attempting to finish the visa liberalisation process with the EU in order to permit the latter’s citizens to travel without a visa in EU countries; however, such a process has not been finished yet.
Back in 2018, it was estimated that the Balkan country met all the needed criteria set by the EU in order for the visa liberalisation process to be completed; however, it still hasn’t been finished, despite the fact that officials in EU are continuously urging the EU to lift the visa requirement for Kosovars.
Kosovo’s authorities believed that the visa liberalisation process would be finished during the Brussels meeting after it was speculated that such a decision could be taken. However, the Balkan county’s citizens are still waiting for the abolishment of visa-requirement, hoping to travel without visas in the near future.
In this regard, the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, stressed that the Balkan country would reject any roadmap or reassessment of visa liberalisation criteria.In addition, Kosovo’s President emphasised the fact that Kosovo met all the conditions while stressing that the decision on liberalisation has been delayed.
“We want to be treated like other countries have been treated; in the history of the European Union, it has never happened to set a second roadmap, consequently new criteria, or re-evaluation of the criteria from the beginning, so it is necessary that we as the Republic of Kosovo to oppose such an approach, as we have done,” Osmani stressed as reported by Telegraphy.
As for the Henley Passport Index, it also showed that Germany and Spain have Europe’s most powerful passports in terms of the number of destinations their holders can access visa-free to a total of 190 destinations.
In addition, it revealed that European countries continue to be ranked in the first positions, in terms of world’s most powerful passports.
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