(Bloomberg) -- Serbia’s leader is promising to deliver membership of the European Union as early as 2025. For the Balkan country’s younger citizens, that’s not soon enough.
A study published this week found that half of 20-to-29 year-olds plan to leave abroad within the next year, citing poor job prospects and corruption. The research was carried out in four municipalities where President Aleksandar Vucic won about 50% or more of votes in 2017 elections and where net wages are below the national average of $520 a month.
It’s a scenario that’s already playing out in other parts of the region. Hundreds of thousands of workers have left Ukraine, whose EU future is even less certain, after looser visa rules allowed them to seek higher pay in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany.
Even membership of the bloc doesn’t guarantee that people will stay. It’s taken more than a decade for Lithuania, which joined in 2004, to stem the flow of emigrants.
About 415,000 people left Serbia between 2007 and 2016, mainly for Germany, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“The ongoing exodus will continue in the absence of state measures,” the researchers said.
While much of eastern Europe is in the midst of a labor drought that’s pushed unemployment to record lows, Serbia’s jobless rate is more than 12% and tops 30% among people aged 20 to 24. Vucic has pledged infrastructure investment of 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion) to 10 billion euros to boost economic growth to 5% or 6%.
“We’ll make a new plan and a grand program that will create jobs for everyone in Serbia,” he said at the weekend. His office didn’t respond to Bloomberg questions on the study, which was conducted during April and May.
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