Kosovo blames EU for failure to negotiate normalization with Serbia
Kosovo sees that the European Union was behind the collapse of the talks with Serbia in light of the number plate row between the two.
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Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti speaks during an interview with Reuters at his office in Pristina, Kosovo August 10, 2022 (Reuters)
Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti cast blame on EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell for failure to negotiate exact steps for an agreement on full normalization of relations with Serbia, local media reported Monday.
Earlier today, a summit for Belgrade and Pristina was held by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell amid the escalation in Kosovo, despite Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's pessimism that a deal could be reached. The President and Prime Minister of Kosovo and the EU Special Representative Miroslav Lajcak attended the summit.
On Monday, Borrell held a new round of talks between Belgrade and Pristina amid heightened tensions in the border region. At the talks' conclusion, Vucic said the negotiations with the Kosovo authorities in Brussels on postponing the controversial measures of Pristina were fruitless.
"For reasons beyond my understanding, we were not able to reach absolutely any agreement. The Serbian side was completely constructive, and we accepted the amended texts ten times, but the Albanian side did not want to accept anything," the Serbian President stressed, as quoted by Serbian state news agency Tanjug.
"All the time they supplemented something impossible, so all I can say is that I want to collect my thoughts, I have saved all the papers [from the meeting] and will appeal to the citizens," Vucic added.
On Sunday, Vucic did not expect Kosovo to backtrack on its decision to penalize citizens driving with Serbian-issued license plates and warned that the policy may lead the breakaway province to yet another escalation after November 21.
“The EU suggested that Kosovo doesn’t issue fines for illegal license plates and continue with warnings, while Serbia no longer issues plates with letter abbreviations of Kosovo cities," Kurti said, as quoted by the Kosovo Online internet media.
Kurti noted that this proposal was "unacceptable' since the EU, acting as a mediator, did not suggest further steps for signing a final agreement on full normalization of relations and rejected the previously agreed date, March 2023, according to the media.
Kurti believes that the whole European Union should have proposed March 2023 if Germany and France suggested it.
The Kosovar Government require local Serbs to re-register their car plates, demanding that they feature the EU-standard letter code of RKS instead of KM, the Serbian identifier for the disputed region of Kosovska Mitrovica on the border. October 31 was the deadline for the re-registration.
The main reason for the tension is the 2008 declaration of independence of Kosovo which Serbia does not recognize and encourages the Serb minority to remain loyal to Belgrade.
This month, Serbs in northern Kosovo resigned from public institutions in protest over the row on vehicle number plates.
The Serb representatives have since returned to Kosovo's parliament but not to other public bodies.
Pristina has declared that around 10,000 Kosovan Serbs with license plates issued by Serbia must replace them with plates from the Republic of Kosovo by next April, under a gradual plan that would involve warnings, fines, and road bans.
In the meantime, Kosovo police will start issuing fines on Tuesday for all owners of vehicles that have not been re-registered with the RKS license plates after the deadline set by the Kosovo Government ended on Sunday.
