SErbia Today Interview Srdjan Sreckovic

TODAY

INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE ON SERBIAN CURRENT AFFAIRS

Serbia

Custom Search

SerbiaTODAY
BLOG

Amazon.com Widgets

Forecast Satellite

INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK
Interview July 07 2009
Srdjan Sreckovic
Minister of the Diaspora

Millions of Diaspora Serbs Represent Huge, Untapped Potential - Minister Srdjan Sreckovic

By Ljilja Cvekic

BELGRADE, July 07 (Serbia Today) – Serbia wants to reverse the brain drain that has deprived it of over half a million people in the last two decades, and has passed a new Diaspora Law to pursue both recent emigrants and its long-established Diaspora to strengthen ties with the home country, ideally returning with both capital and know-how.

Most of the people who left in the 1990s were university graduates, many of them young men wanting to escape the draft that sent their classmates to wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Others already established professionals desperate to avoid the economic crisis and hyperinflation that robbed them of their earning potential in the prime of their careers.

“More than three million people of Serb origin live outside our country’s borders – more than a third of our population,” Diaspora Minister Srdjan Sreckovic told Serbia Today in an interview. “That is a huge human, political and economic potential for Serbia’s state.”

He said the state wants to offer its foreign-based citizens a chance to “become true partners in Serbia’s development by using their expertise, skills and intellectual capital”.

“The significance of the Diaspora Law is great,” he added, “first of all because it sets for the first time a normative basis that will present a foundation of a long-term policy regardless of political parties’ interests and the composition of the government.”

A key part of the new law aims to make things easier for older people who left in the previous wave of emigration, in the 1970’s, the majority of them poorly educated rural residents heading mostly for menial, low-paid jobs in West European states like Germany and France. Often leaving their children behind with grandparents, they aimed mainly to send money back regularly, save enough to build houses and maybe open a small business in their hometowns, although many of them ended up staying in their host states for decades.

Their low educational level made it hard for them to find their way through all the bureaucratic maze needed to get documents, sort out paperwork or legalize their property, and to this end the Diaspora Ministry has now opened Diaspora Centers around the world and publishes a manual containing all information on legal provisions and procedures regarding personal documents, citizenship or military service.

Another focus of the Ministry is to help young experts who are interested in returning home to find appropriate jobs, as although many say they would love to return to live, work and raise families in the familiar environment of Serbia, most have little faith that Serbia’s political, economic and social climate has really changed.

“We have to work long and patiently to gain back their confidence, step by step, but firmly and by making concrete moves,” Sreckovic said.

“Our task is to show that Serbia is changing, changing for better, and that we are every day getting better than we were yesterday. And we are succeeding in doing so.” He says the current pace of “brain drain” cannot be compared with the dramatic one from 15 years ago, adding that young people show now more readiness to return.

“Those young people are very precious to us. They feel that things in Serbia are changing for the better, although maybe not at the pace we expected.”

Serbia hopes also to motivate people living abroad to invest more in the country. “The risk for investments in Serbia is decreasing each year and as a result our Diaspora invested since the democratic changes (in 2000) close to $500 million in small and medium enterprises in Serbia. About 20,000 people work in those companies, which is of great value in the period of economic crisis when we are fight for each and every job.” The new law also introduces the Diaspora Assembly, with delegates elected by Serbs living abroad and the participation of the prime minister and president, ministers and representatives of the Serbian Orthodox church and Chamber of Commerce.

The law differentiates between “the Diaspora”, in sense of political and economic emigration, and “Serbs in the region”, meaning territories in fellow ex-Yugoslav countries, focusing also on better regional cooperation in that respect.

This weekend, July 9-10, the Ministry holds in Belgrade the first international conference of young leaders from the Diaspora that will gather young people of Serb origin from all over the world. “We want to link all of them, to create a network of our young and successful people who will cooperate among themselves but also with their country, Serbia,” Sreckovic said.