The big aspirator

Paradoxically, the most successful Kosovar Government would become the one that ensures that as many people leave Kosovo as quickly as possible for Europe. And this is the best indicator of confidence in the outlook within the country.

1.

My barber in Pristina has had the barber/assistant competition open for six months. To those who accept, he gives his experience for free and a minimum salary of 350 euros. Until today, there is no job announcement.

Once upon a time, and not long ago, before the war, there was the tradition of the kallfa, of the one who goes and learns from the master and then, when he gets the trade, he goes to work. Families took their children to pick up crafts without expecting to get paid. Sometimes the craftsman had to be hired to accept the child for what is today called a craft assistant.

But that doesn't happen today. My barber, in the best sociological analysis at the moment, points out two essential factors why young people are not announced in the competition at all. One is the evolutionary factor (time) and the other, related to it, the factor of alternative projection of the future. In fact, the barber said something simpler: "no one likes to be seen with a salary, slowly" and "everyone is waiting for their visas to leave". But, when you translate it into time planes, it turns out that in the culture of young people - those who are not announced in the barber competition - there is no belief that in an evolutionary form - first as an assistant, then as a barber, then as the owner of one's own shop - economic and social comfort can be achieved. And two, even if such an evolution exists, it is better that it takes place somewhere outside of Kosovo - in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden.

The liberalization of visas, therefore, is not only a political factor - one Government fell allegedly because it could not ensure the liberalization of visas, the other one that is in power today got it supposedly because it will ensure the liberalization of visas - but it is an economic and social determining factor .

And it dictates time.

Not only the parties represented in the Assembly of Kosovo are waiting for the news about the liberalization of visas, to justify their political action for or against, but an inactive stream of people is waiting for it, who, once the visas are liberalized, will save the two thousand or three thousand euros that they borrowed or saved as a family to escape the illegal streets and they will set off on the adventure that should create a new life for them.

Paradoxically, the most successful Kosovar government would be the one that ensures that as many people as possible leave Kosovo for Europe as soon as possible. And this is the best indicator than the confidence in the personal perspective within the country.

2.

The owner of the car wash in Kavaja, where he washes his car, has almost the same problem. He can't find workers to wash cars. Those who had fled, some to the Netherlands and some to another country. They continue to wash cars, but they do it in the Netherlands or some other country, and my barber's two sociological explanations are valid for them too. They see their evolution by washing cars, first, and then maybe even being owners - but owners in the Netherlands, where the cost of labor is many times higher than in Kavaje and where, located in a stable train called the welfare state of of the law that has gone on hundreds of years earlier and will go on hundreds of years to come, the future can be predicted with certainty.

It's the fitters, the bricklayers, the waiters - a hotel owner and builder tells me - who are fleeing the most. So, those who don't even need to think in an evolutionary way: as an adjuster and bricklayer you can start now and work until retirement and you will have a respectable life.

And, there are also nurses and doctors who are going. From the country where you can still discover diseases that have been forgotten in other parts of Europe, Albanian doctors and nurses go to enter a competition of advanced medical systems at the world level, as is the case with Germany or Sweden.

The Government of Albania will mark as a success the start of negotiations for EU membership. At the end of that process EU member states can accept Albania as a member state, putting time limits on it to participate in the unique labor market.

If negotiations begin in June, the entire next decade will be spent in mutual deception. Albania will try to deceive the EU that it is not participating in the EU labor market, and the EU will deceive Albania and itself, who does not know that this is happening.

3.

The EU can be seen as a big aspirator. First, it absorbs the people, and if it's worth it, the countries where those people lived. This is what happened to the Portuguese and Spanish, Greeks and Croatians, Bulgarians and Romanians. Restaurants and construction sites are evolutionary stories of integration: once the Spaniards were waiters and then the Bulgarians came, once the Portuguese were masons and then the Poles and then the Romanians.

The difference between all these is that the Albanians have been there for some 50 years, since Marshal Tito decided that it is better to have rich immigration than a poor and dissatisfied population. And, in contrast to all of these, the Albanians, those of Kosovo, do not yet see the critical point where the great aspirator of the EU will begin to absorb not only the people but also the states.

At best, Kosovo Albanians expect to be like the Albanians of Albania, to have the right with their passport to go out and look for work in Europe without a visa. At best, the Albanians of Albania expect to be like the Serbs, a country that is negotiating to join the EU, but has not yet settled its affairs at home; one state under the great influence of organized drug crime, the other state under the great influence of crimes against humanity and more common criminal derivatives.

4.

There is a tradition left, a little from tourism, a little from the history books, for Albanians to start their own delegations in the capitals of Europe to complain about the injustices done to Albanians. A hundred years ago, delegations of mustaqoks - gege and toska, priests and writers - went to show the chancelleries of the West that we are not Ottomans, that we are like them, that injustice will be done if they don't make us a state. After a hundred years, delegations from Albania and Kosovo leave for something that today is called lobbying; the Albanian delegations of both countries have almost the same refrain: we are being treated unfairly, we are not Ottomans, we are Europeans. And, the request: since we are Europeans, make our state (states) like this.

A hundred years later, European chancelleries do not depend on long letters from consuls to understand how European we are, nor on the impressions of mustaches - gaga and toska, priests and writers - but on satellite recordings that show the amount of smuggled drugs and calculations simple online that show with what dizzying speed the rulers of the new state in Europe manage to steal the treasury and everything public, except those called public houses, which are part of their fiefdoms.

Meanwhile, Albania and Kosovo are starting a new wave of Europeanization. On foot, crossing EU borders one by one and one hundred by one hundred and one thousand by one thousand in the immediate hope that at that moment they have become diaspora.

© KOHA Daily