In accordance with the law on foreigners, the Ministry of the Interior of Croatia issued a total of 172,499 residence and work permits in the period from January 1 to December 31, 2023, of which about 10,000 were for citizens of Kosovo, reports Kosovo Online.
Of these permits, the largest number is in construction, tourism, industry, transport and trade.
112,981 permits were issued for new employees, 40,660 for renewal, and 18,858 for seasonal workers, the majority of which were in tourism (16,882). Of this number of permits, over 38,000 were issued to citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
About 10,000 citizens of Kosovo received residence and work permits in Croatia last year. As for the countries of the Balkans, citizens of Albania have the fewest work permits in Croatia, with around 4,200 permits.
The Pristina Institute GAP published a study according to which 28 percent of Kosovo citizens will emigrate in the first half of 2024 after the liberalization of visas and that the vast majority of them will go to Germany.
As stated in the report entitled “Tendency of emigration from Kosovo after visa liberalization: Impact on the workforce”, the sectors that will be most affected by the departure of workers are construction, gastronomy, trade and production.
“Sectors that are expected to be most affected by the departure of employees in the short and medium term are construction (18.7 percent), hospitality and gastronomy (18.7 percent), trade (18.1 percent) and manufacturing (12.9 percent) .
These are the sectors with the largest number of employees and where employee productivity is high, but wages still remain low.
The report states, among other things, that wages are expected to increase in these sectors compared to other sectors, while 27 percent of respondents said that their wages increased in 2023.
The reasons for leaving Kosovo, which the respondents stated in the survey conducted in December last year, are mainly economic.
The destinations for migration are Germany (71.4 percent), Switzerland (11.7 percent) and Austria (5.3 percent).
“About 45 percent of respondents were employed in regular jobs in 2023 (39.3 percent in the private sector and 5.8 percent in the public sector). It has been shown that economic reasons are dominant in making the decision to emigrate,” the report states.
More than 20 percent of people who plan to emigrate earned an income of 301-450 euros in the last month, while 32.9 percent did not earn any income.
The majority of citizens who plan to emigrate are people who have only completed secondary education (57.7 percent).
GAP announced that from 2012 to 2022, more than 338,000 citizens emigrated from Kosovo.
