Eurasia Press & News
Launched six months ago, the Open Balkan ID Number was presented as marking the start of a single labour market between Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania. It has had some teething troubles.
Andrija Ivanov spent years moving from job to job, place to place in his native Serbia. Then, in 2021, he took a holiday in Albania. Something clicked, and Ivanov resolved to move. The Open Balkan initiative seemed to come along at exactly the right moment.
Envisaged as a vehicle to remove barriers to the free movement of goods, services and people, Open Balkan currently takes in European Union membership candidates Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia.
In March 2024, Serbia unveiled the Open Balkan ID number, issued by each participating country and with which, for example, Serbian citizens can, in theory, apply to live and work in Albania or North Macedonia without having to pay for or even seek a work or residence permit.
Fifty-seven year-old Ivanov tried to give it a go. Generating the ID number on Serbia’s e-government portal was the easy bit; the problems started when he tried to use it in the Albanian system.
“When I go to the e-Albania website, I can’t find the option to register,” said Ivanov, who had previously worked in programming and so was not exactly an IT amateur. “The only registration offered is with their [Albanian] ID.” Then there’s the fact the Albanian site is only in Albanian.
“I didn’t get any response even though I sent a couple of inquiries,” Ivanov told BIRN. “In the end, I gave up.”
Six months since the system went live, there is no clear data in either Serbia, Albania or North Macedonia showing how many people have generated Open Balkan ID numbers or how many successfully found work in one of the other countries. What evidence there is suggests the uptake has been underwhelming.
Many e-government services have yet to be translated into the other languages of the Open Balkan initiative, and the ID system itself appears far from user-friendly.
“A lot of things need to be clicked in order to find a job as part of the Open Balkan initiative,” said Jelena Jevtovic, communications manager at the Serbian Association of Employers. “It would be good if the system was simpler.”
“We have no data at all about interest among people from North Macedonia and Albania in working in Serbia. Nor do we have data about interest among [Serbian] citizens to work there.”
Data shortfall
Asked for data about the issuance of Open Balkan ID numbers, the Albanian government directed BIRN to the National Agency of Information, AKSHI, while the foreign ministry said it was a matter for the Albanian police. AKSHI said the police and foreign ministry were responsible. The police did not respond.
The Serbian Office for IT and eGovernment also did not respond to a request for comment or a Freedom of Information request concerning Open Balkan ID data.
Serbia’s National Employment Service, NSZ, which can help job-seekers find work, said it had no Albanian or North Macedonia citizens on its books, despite the fact that all Open Balkan ID users have the right to use the NSZ service.
Since January this year, five work permits have been issued to Albanian citizens and 35 to citizens of North Macedonia. Work permits are not required if an individual goes through the Open Balkan ID process, suggesting these 40 people did not.
Milos Turinski, PR manager at one of the most popular Serbian job platforms, Jobs Infostud, said citizens of North Macedonia and Albania were applying in Serbia “for both seasonal and permanent jobs, depending on the sector and market needs”.
In North Macedonia, the Open Balkan point person at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Lidija Ilieva, said 1,928 citizens of North Macedonia people had generated Open Balkan ID numbers on the country’s e-government portal but that the ministry had no data on how many of them had found work in Serbia or Albania. The site is currently only available in Macedonian, though Ilieva said there are plans to translate it into Albanian and Serbian.
Some 116 Serbian citizens and one Albanian citizen have also generated IDs, Ilieva said. The Albanian and just over half the Serbians have found jobs.
“The process of issuing ID numbers began in March this year without any obstacles,” Ilieva told BIRN.
Employers still trust permit system more
There are some apparent advantages to getting an Open Balkan ID number.
Under the deal as it was signed, the holder of such an ID number no longer has to seek and pay for work and residence permits for the other two countries in the Open Balkan initiative.
Also, with an Open Balkan ID number, an individual can, for example, move to Serbia and look for a job; they don’t need an employment contract before they move.
However, the ID number is only valid for two years before it needs to be renewed. In Serbia, a work and residence permit is issued for three years. And while repeated temporary residence permits eventually entitle the holder to permanent residence, the same does not apply under the Open Balkan ID process.
“When you get the right to temporary residence under the Law on Employment of Foreign Citizens and you renew it for a long time, at some point you will be able to get permanent residence in Serbia,” said Serbian lawyer Relja Radovic. “With Open Balkan you cannot do that; you do not realise the right to permanent settlement at any moment.”
Jevtovic said employers in Serbia still prefer the more familiar work permit system.
“The unique work permit is better known and they already had experience with it, and then it is too much of a challenge for many of them to venture into something unknown,” she said.
This is particularly true in cases of companies whose very survival “depends on whether they will have workers or not” – a common situation in Serbia, where there is a shortage of workers in almost all sectors.
In order to assess the effectiveness of the Open Balkan ID option, employers need data, Jevtovic told BIRN.
“If such statistics existed, then it would certainly be possible to calculate whether it is worth it or not.”
Not a single labour market
Open Balkan has been dubbed a mini-Schengen, a Balkan version of Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone where people, goods and services flow across invisible borders. In practice, some barriers still exist in the Schengen zone, and even more so between Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia.
A 2021 agreement between the three countries guaranteeing free labour market access was hailed by some political leaders as the creation of a single labour market.
Radovic, the lawyer, said this was patently untrue.
“That agreement does not establish a single labour market but merely replaces local work permits,” he said.
National authorities still have to approve a person’s arrival, whether or not they hold an Open Balkan ID number, he said. Even then, that approval is limited to two years.
“If there really was a real single labour market, then there would be no need for any approval from the state and everyone could stay as long as they want to live and work in one of the three countries with just an ID card from their country of origin,” said Radovic.
In Albania, Zef Preci, the executive director of the Albanian Centre for Economic Research, said the “movement of people, cultures and capital is something to be welcomed”.
However, he told BIRN, Albania lacks policies that would stimulate local production and wages are lower than in Serbia and North Macedonia, meaning Albanian workers risk leaving in large numbers. “Such a relief measure does not help the economic development of our country.”
