Kosovo tourism law now covers monastery visits

The tourism law adopted in Pristina took effect on Saturday, August 1, and from that day only a licensed tourist guide may lead organized groups around heritage sites in Kosovo. The requirement attaches to the job of guiding rather than to the purpose of the trip, which is why it reaches the buses that pull up at the gates of Serbian monasteries every summer.

The law also sets terms for arrivals from abroad. A group travelling with a foreign guide who holds no Kosovo licence must be accompanied by a locally licensed guide for the duration of the visit. Fines have been announced for breaches, but no amounts have been published so far, and no date has been given for when checks begin.

Why does the Diocese want pilgrims treated separately?

The Diocese of Raska and Prizren has said that pilgrimages should not be equated with sightseeing tours. The Diocese said it had received reports from pilgrim groups that Kosovo Police had been handing out leaflets with the new rules at crossing points. These are printed notices given to travellers on entry, not individual rulings served on a named person.

The distinction the Diocese is drawing carries practical weight. If a group travelling with a priest and arriving for a liturgy counts as an organized tourist visit, it has to hire a guide licensed by an institution in Pristina. If it does not count as one, the tourism law leaves it alone. Where exactly that line falls is not clear from the explanations given so far.

We covered the same dispute when Pristina first signalled that pilgrimage would be handled under the rules for tourist guiding. At that stage it was a signal and a reading of a draft. Since August 1 it is a rule in force, and that is the single, decisive change from the earlier phase of the argument.

Four churches at the centre of the argument

The four churches named in the debate sit in different corners of Kosovo. Visoki Decani stands near the town of Decani in Metohija, the Patriarchate of Pec at the mouth of the Rugova gorge, Our Lady of Ljevis in the centre of Prizren, and Gracanica some ten kilometres from Pristina. If one trip takes in several of them, the guide requirement applies to the whole circuit rather than to a single stop.

The reaction from the Bundestag

Zaklin Nastic, a member of the German Bundestag for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, posted on X on July 31. She wrote that pilgrims are not tourists, and said that for many Serbs the licensed guide requirement would amount to more than an administrative measure, namely an attempt to control access to their shrines and to their own cultural and religious heritage.

While Europe talks about freedom of religion and human rights, Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija face discrimination in that area too.

In the same post, Nastic named the shrines she had in mind.

The monasteries of Visoki Decani, Gracanica, the Patriarchate of Pec and Our Lady of Ljevis are centuries-old witnesses to Serbian history. They deserve protection, not political appropriation.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance sits in opposition in the Bundestag, so her post is not Berlin’s official position. It is still the first time a member of the German parliament has spoken about Kosovo’s tourism law, and all four churches she listed are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and on its list of heritage in danger.

What is still unanswered

Several concrete questions remain open now that the law is in force:

• the fine amounts have not been published
• it has not been spelled out whether a pilgrim group without a professional guide falls under organized guiding at all
• it is not known who checks compliance at the monastery gates, the police or the tourism inspectorate

The next major pilgrimage date is the Dormition of the Mother of God on August 28. By then it should become clear how the new rule is applied to trips built around church services, and what counts as organized guiding once the first checks have been carried out.