Pressure is growing for Bosnia and Herzegovina to harmonise its visa policy with the EU and to eliminate visa-free travel for citizens of Turkey, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.
Nino Bilajac
In January this year, he announced that by the end of the year Bosnia would introduce visas for one of the countries with which it currently has a visa-free regime, but he did not specify which country.
The European Commission has been warning the Western Balkan countries for years that an unharmonised visa policy could pose a security and migration risk. Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson stated back in 2022 that candidate countries must harmonise their visa regimes with the European Union if they wish to maintain credibility in the accession process, warning that the EU would closely monitor deviations that could lead to increased migration pressures.
Similar messages have been repeated in the European Commission’s annual reports on progress towards membership, as well as in reports on the visa suspension mechanism, which requires Bosnia to gradually align with the European list of countries whose citizens require a visa to enter the Schengen area.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told BIRN that through the Stabilisation and Association Agreement it signed with Brussels, Bosnia and Herzegovina undertook the obligation to gradually harmonise its visa policy with the EU.
“The European Union regulation establishes a list of third countries whose citizens must have a visa when crossing the external borders of member states. On this list are countries whose citizens can enter Bosnia and Herzegovina without the obligation to obtain visas, namely: Qatar, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Turkey, China, Russia and Vanuatu,“ the ministry stated.
It added that Bosnia and Herzegovina is obliged, over the coming years, to gradually introduce a visa regime for certain countries from this list, but that such decisions will require political consensus, which currently does not exist.
Since 2025, the European Union has further tightened the rules of the Visa Suspension Mechanism, enabling responses in cases of increased undocumented migration, asylum abuse, security threats or significant deviations by candidate countries from the EU’s common visa policy. Because of this, Western Balkan countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, are under increased monitoring.
The latest report by the European Commission on the visa suspension mechanism stated that Bosnia had regressed in its alignment with the EU visa policy in 2025. The commission noted that the country maintains seven permanent visa-free regimes with countries whose citizens require visas to enter the EU, while the number of seasonal exemptions increased from one to three.
This raised the number of deviations between Bosnia’s visa policy and that of the EU from eight to 10.
Economic reasons for deviation
