According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Serbian state statistics debunk a Belgrade myth about the massive exodus of Serbs from Kosovo. The figures correspond to the decline in Serbia, concludes the article.
Serbia’s claim of a Serb exodus from Kosovo “can be dismissed as false, based on the official statistics of the Serbian state”, writes Michael Martens, correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Belgrade in an earlier edition this week of the German newspaper.
Martens says that “the number of Serbs in Kosovo has been continuously declining for years, but the same can be said for the population number in Serbia, except for Belgrade, Novi Sad, and some other cities”. He bases this claim on calculations by the European Stability Initiative (ESI). It has examined “publicly available government figures that allow for quite accurate conclusions about the number of Serbs”.
ESI analyzes, for example, Serbia’s health insurance figures. According to them, “in 2017, there were still 109,000 insured Serbs in Kosovo”, but “six years later, there were fewer than 107,000”. This shows that the decline for Kosovo is 2.4%, but for Serbia itself, “the decline in the same period was 2.9%”.
Serbia’s Statistical Office, cited by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reports a drastic decline in the number of pupils (Serbs) attending elementary schools in Kosovo: from 14,500 in 2004 to 10,700 in 2021. But in Serbia, the decline is the same: here, according to official state data, the figures fell by 23%.
Regarding pensions, in the last 11 years, Serbia has paid 6.3% fewer pensions in Kosovo, while in Serbia, it has paid 2.6% less. But ESI and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung remind that “the most important employer for Serbs in Kosovo is the state. The fact that Serbs leave Kosovo upon reaching retirement age is not new. For decades, there has been an ‘exodus of pensioners’ from Kosovo”.
“The demographic evolution of the Serb minority in Kosovo corresponds to general trends throughout Southeast Europe for years on end. As a result of low birth rates, high emigration, and a lack of attraction for immigration, the population number is declining in all countries of the region,” concludes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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