Kosovo and Montenegro favor safe country status

According to a report published in Tuesday's edition of the German business daily "Handelsblatt," both Kosovo's Prime Minister Isa Mustafa and his Montenegrin counterpart, Milo Dukanovic made their wishes clear in letters to the German member of the European Parliament, David McAllister.

"We are in favor of Kosovo being classified under German law as a safe country of origin," Mustafa wrote, adding that political persecution or torture did not exist in the Balkan nation.

According to the report, Dukanovic's letter to McAllister struck a similar tone.

"I am convinced that Montenegro meets all of the conditions to be classified as a safe country of origin in the spirit of the German law," Dukanovic wrote. He added that he saw no reason why any citizen of Montenegro "must seek asylum in a European or other state."

In view of the sentiments expressed in the letters, McAllister, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, (CDU) called on her government to move swiftly to declare Kosovo and Montenegro countries of safe origin, a status that should make it more difficult for their citizens to be granted asylum in Germany.

Questionable effectiveness

However, what effect this would have on the number of applicants from Kosovo or Montenegro being granted asylum in Germany is unclear. On its website, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees plays down the effect it was expected to have on applicants from Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which were declared safe countries of origin late last year.

"The Act does not influence the number of positive decisions. This number is however already very low, regardless of the Act. Only 0.3% of applicants from Serbia, the FYR of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina received any other than a negative decision in their asylum proceedings in 2014 (January-October)," a statement on the Office's website said.

In this light, declaring a place a safe country of origin appears to be largely symbolic. However, at a time when Germany is struggling to cope with a growing number of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, the Christian Democrats are keen to declare more countries as safe. However, any move to do so would have to pass not just through the Bundestag lower house of parliament, but also the upper house, the Bundesrat, which represents the governments of Germany's 16 states. As the CDU doesn't have a majority in the Bundesrat, it would have to reach a compromise with other parties to do so - just as it did to make possible the declaration of Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia as safe countries of origin last year.

In the "Handelsblatt" on Tuesday, McAllister called on the states led by Social-Democrat-Green coalitions to "end their blockade" on the issue.

pfd/jil (dpa, AFP)