Exit Festival confirmed that next year’s event will take place between July 8 and July 11 this week just as the European Union announced it’s to scrap visa requirements for citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia from December 19.
Exit head of press Rajko Bozic said the Exit team and people throughout Serbia are absolutely delighted.
“It's a hugely big deal for us, not just in practical terms but also symbolically,” said Rajko.
“Serbia’s been effectively quarantined since the early 90s and many people lost hope that we would ever be able to travel freely around Europe. Many people I know were crying when they were watching the TV news announcing the visa changes,” he said.
Initially launching as a protest against Serbian nationalist leader Milosevic’s totalitarian regime in 1999, the massively popular European event began actively campaigning for visa liberalisation in 2002 inviting the European Commissioner for Enlargement Oli Rehn to the Novi Sad Festival to debate the issue soon after.
“Alongside our friends from the Citizens' Pact for SEE we awarded Oli a charter of being an honorable citizenship of The State of EXIT,” Rajko recalled.
“The charter listed all the documents he didn’t need to enter the State of Exit and was actually a long, long list of all the documents we would then be asked to submit to get a visa to the Schengen countries.
“For most young people in the Balkans it was impossible to submit all of the documents: you needed proof that you owned property, proof that you’d had a regular salary for six months and sometimes they would even ask you to show your telephone bills to prove that you are regularly communicating with someone abroad- as if you can't write letters or e-mails,” he continued.
“So we were particularly proud when at the press conference in Brussels when he announced visa liberalization, Oli Rehn showed our charter and said: "I remember when we started the struggle for liberalization at the EXIT festival." It all looks surreal now,” he smiled.
People from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania will still face the same ultra-harsh visa regulations for failing to reach acceptable standards for ‘passport security, border controls and fighting corruption and organised crime’, the Sofia Echo (Bulgaria) reported. Rajko said Exit fight’s for normalized travel for all Balkans people goes on.
“Yes, of course we’ll still be campaigning for Bosnia, for Albania too,” he vowed.
“It's a complex situation that needs effort from both sides, but it's well worth a lot of effort. It's just a shame that in a year when we celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall we still have walls in southern Europe,” he said.
1,000 ‘early bird’ tickets for Exit 2010 are available for sale online now at £72, with prices rising to £85 from January 1 then £99 in June.
http://www.etickets.to/buy/?e=3092 (Buy Exit Festival tickets here)
