Church seeks pilgrim exemption from Kosovo tourism law

Kosovo’s tourism law, which from August 1 requires every organised group to travel with a guide licensed in Pristina, now reaches the buses that carry worshippers to Serbian monasteries. The Raska-Prizren Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church has issued a statement asking that pilgrimages be kept apart from the commercial tourism trade.

Under the rules announced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Pristina, a group that enters with a foreign guide who holds no licence issued under Kosovo regulations must have a local licensed guide alongside it for the entire visit. Travel agencies are obliged to hire a qualified guide for every organised group, and working without a licence counts as illegal and carries fines.

Drivers of tourist coaches were handed ministry leaflets at the Merdare administrative crossing. Kosovo police also gave them to pilgrim groups, and that was what prompted the diocese to speak.

What the diocese actually said

The statement starts from what the buildings are for, rather than from the status of the people arriving:

The monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija are above all living shrines, places of worship, prayer and monastic life. The vast majority of visitors do not come as tourists, but as pilgrims.

From that follows the specific objection to how the rules are being applied.

It is necessary to draw a clear distinction between commercial tourism activity and religious pilgrimage travel as one of the key ways of exercising freedom of religion.

The diocese invoked Kosovo’s constitution, the law on freedom of religion and Annex V of the Ahtisaari plan, which grant the Serbian Orthodox Church a special status, and said that “no interpretation of tourism regulations can diminish the right of the Serbian Orthodox Church to independently organise religious life in its monasteries”.

Until further notice it advises organised pilgrim groups to travel accompanied by a priest, monk or nun acting as spiritual guide, and to carry written confirmation from a parish, monastery or the diocese that the journey is religious in character. The diocese stresses this is not a legal requirement but a temporary practical measure.

How many licensed guides are there?

The ministry has licensed the first 12 tourist guides, while travel agencies estimate that only about ten guides hold a licence. That number runs straight into the peak of the pilgrimage season: the Transfiguration falls on August 19 and the Dormition of the Mother of God on August 28, the days that bring more coaches to Visoki Decani, Gracanica and the Patriarchate of Pec than any other in the year.

Acting Minister of Culture and Tourism Saranda Bogujevci said of the licensing that “there is oversight, foreign tourist guides cannot come without respecting the rules”. The president of the Tourism Union, Baki Hoti, said that “regulating the market was one of the sector’s long-standing demands, particularly because of cases where foreign guides interpreted history without institutional oversight”.

Milos Kovic, a history professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, answered that argument directly: “Any attempt to impose a particular interpretation on those who are guides is in itself totalitarian.”

One measure in a longer sequence

The tourism law fits a pattern of administrative decisions that take effect on a fixed date and land on the daily life of Serbs south of the Ibar. The ban on payments in dinars took effect on February 1, 2024, and the land of Visoki Decani monastery was entered into the cadastre only in May 2023, seven years after the Constitutional Court in Pristina confirmed the monastery’s ownership.

The next step is operational rather than legal: whether police at Merdare will start turning back coaches without a licensed guide on Saturday, or whether the leaflet stays a warning.