 |
| Political Map of the Balkans |
The Western Balkans is facing an immigration crisis.
This is especially evident in North Macedonia, as its latest census shows.
The country has lost at least 10% of its population of nearly two million since the last census in 2002.
Slow economic growth and lack of investment have hampered the country, which is now home to just 1.8 million people.
Since the country declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, many Macedonians have hoped that rapid integration into the European Union would secure a brighter future.
But North Macedonia's path to EU membership has been repeatedly blocked for decades, first by Greece and now by Bulgaria, raising strong doubts that the country will ever join the EU and, consequently, prompting many people to leave the country.
Bosnia and Kosovo have not even been granted candidate status, despite their efforts, while Serbia and Montenegro also do not have good prospects for full membership, despite both being considered candidate countries and Serbia has even opened new negotiating chapters with the bloc.
In neighboring Albania, about 1.7 million people, or approximately 37% of the population, have left the country in the last three decades, according to government figures.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled Serbia to flee the country following sanctions against the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic sparked by the wars of Yugoslavia break-up in the 1990s and NATO bombing in 1999 to end the conflict in Kosovo. These measures have hit hard the economy and some estimates suggest that up to 10,000 doctors have left the country in the last 20 years.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, surveys by local NGOs show that at least 400,000 Bosniaks have emigrated in the last eight years.
The country's latest political crisis - considered the worst since independence and the end of the 1992-1995 war - is expected to push even more people to leave the country in the near future.
"All the countries of the Western Balkans have been affected to varying degrees by emigration," said Ilir Gedeshi to Albanian media, a professor of economics in Tirana.
"The main reasons are economic, but also, social reasons are occupying an increasingly important place."
But for Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia, and Serbia (countries hoping EU membership will change their destiny), the example of Croatia may show that unification is not a magic cure for their troubles.
Since joining the bloc in 2013, the Croatian population of just over 4 million has shrunk by almost 10% in a decade, according to preliminary census findings.
The UN predicts that Croatia will have only 2.5 million inhabitants by the end of the century. Demographers warn that the country's already small population could suffer further losses.