Spain still does not officially recognize Kosovo, but Yes, it already accepts their passports at the borders. The Spanish Government has not announced it publicly, but the Government of Pristina has celebrated it on social networks. On this Saturday afternoon, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo, center-left politician and economist Besnik Beslimi, has celebrated as “good news” that “the obstacle” of the non-recognition of official Kosovar papers at Spanish border controls disappears.
Is the paradoxical dichotomy that the relationship between this country and that Balkan republic has entered at the beginning of the year due to the application of a opening of the Schengen area to Kosovar citizens decided in the EU. Beslimi has written and posted a comment on Facebook in which he announces: “The good news continues for our citizens and the State. DG Home has announced that now even Spain recognizes the passports of the Republic of Kosovo. So we can travel without visas to this country.
The DG Home is the General Directorate for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission, which orders the application from January 1 of a Commission agreement ratified by the European Parliament at the end of April 2023. In compliance with that agreement, Spain will no longer Requires a visa for Kosovars.
The obstacle
“Although visa-free circulation began on January 1, Spain is a destination that joins the countries of the Schengen area to those of us who can travel thanks to liberalization, where the obstacle before was the non-recognition of our passport,” celebrated the number 2 of the Kosovo government on his Facebook profile. It is a message addressed to its citizens, to sell a diplomatic success , but it has been applauded above all by foreign service personnel in various parts of Europe, such as the Kosovo ambassador in Berlin.
Contrast the eloquence shown this Saturday in Pristina with the silence that remains in Madrid. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not commented on the matter. Asked sources from that department – which heads the Minister José Manuel Albares-, they have limited themselves for the moment to not denying to this newspaper the recognition of Kosovo travel documents and to remembering that Spain continues to be one of the five countries in the European Union that does not recognize Kosovo.
The successive governments of Spain have maintained that position since Kosovo’s accession to its own sovereignty, after a short but tough war of division with Serbia that suddenly stopped a NATO aerial bombing campaign in the spring of 1999. Spain, then , having not made official recognition, continues to officially consider Kosovo as an autonomous province of Serbia, as also Greece, Slovakia, Romania and Cyprus.
Paradoxical matter
There is paradoxes within the paradox: Spain does not recognize the country, but its Prime Minister, Social Democrat Albin Kurti, has been received in Madrid and Granada on his last two trips to Spain. In November 2022 he came to a meeting of the Socialist International, an event chaired by Pedro Sanchez, whom he greeted. He was also received on that occasion by a Spanish personal friend: the former Secretary General of NATO Javier Solana.
More paradoxes: representatives of Kosovo have gone to Spain as an official delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, also in November 2022. And in October 2023 the Kosovo authorities came to the summit of European leaders held in Granada under the Spanish presidency of the European Union. Certainly, they were not received with anthem and flag.
And more paradoxes: the free movement of Kosovars between the borders of the European countries of the Schengen area has been promoted and celebrated by Josep Borrellhigh European representative for the EU Foreign and Security Policy, and the highest figure that Spain has in the European institutions.
In addition, 22,000 Spanish soldiers have participated – Defense data – in the NATO KFOR mission to preserve the security of Kosovo, which is not paradoxical, but is part of the explanation of a “Hispanophile passion” that is felt in that countrya source from the Pristina government orbit tells EL PERIÓDICO.
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