The European Union has recently adopted a directive introducing a ban on entering the Schengen zone for a period of five years to all persons who have abused the right to asylum, Swedish Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy Tobias Billstrom said Monday in Belgrade.

After talks with Serbian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic, Billstrom said that it is extremely important that Serbian citizens who try to abuse the right to asylum in Sweden are informed of this decision.

The Swedish minister stressed that if asylum seekers are refused asylum in Sweden, the five-year ban will be valid not only for Sweden but for all countries in the Schengen area. Billstrom assessed his talks with Dacic as very good, noting that the challenges in terms of false asylum seekers are shared by both countries. Asylum is not there for economic reasons but for those who are truly at risk, he said.

Dacic said that the measures taken in Serbia to prevent endangering the visa-free regime with EU countries and have yielded results and led to the reduction in the number of false asylum seekers. He added that the number of asylum seekers in EU countries, mostly in Sweden, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, is still higher today than in the period before visa liberalization.

The largest number of asylum seekers from Serbia, as previously announced, are Roma and Albanians, and more than 95 percent of their requests for asylum were rejected.