After Agreement, Kosovo and Serbia Argue Over Implementation

International mediators are urging Kosovo and Serbia’s leaders to implement the commitments they agreed at the weekend, but officials in Pristina and Belgrade appear to be interpreting the normalisation plan differently.

Aleksandar Vucic, Joseph Borell, Miroslav Lajcak and Albin Kurti meeting in Brussels, November 2022. Screenshot: audiovisual.ec.europa.eu

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti complained on Tuesday that Belgrade is trying to avoid commitments that Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic made when the two countries verbally agreed on a normalisation plan and its implementation at the weekend.

“The other side [Serbia] can’t speak against Kosovo’s membership of international organisations, including the UN. It can’t say that it will never recognise Kosovo because the basis of agreement is actually recognition,” Kurti told media in Pristina.

But Vucic said on Sunday after the agreement that he “will not implement anything related to Kosovo’s membership of the UN or any kind of actual or de jure recognition” of Kosovo.

Vucic’s statement was echoed on Monday by Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, who said that Serbia only agreed to implement “what is up to our red lines”.

Dacic explained that Serbia’s red lines are “no recognition of Kosovo or membership of the UN”.

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell argued however that what Kurti and Vucic agreed in Ohrid in North Macedonia on Sunday represents “an important milestone in the process of normalisation of relations” between Kosovo and Serbia.

“I hope we will no longer be on crisis mode but on the implementation of agreements that were accepted on February 27,” Borrell said.

Olivier Guerot, the French ambassador to Pristina, whose state co-authored the normalisation plan with Germany, said that the EU now will carefully monitor whether or not the agreement is respected and warned of ‘consequences’ to the side which does not fulfill its obligations.

“There will be consequences but, at this stage, we remain optimistic and encourage both sides to implement the agreements,” Guerot told Radio Television of Kosovo, RTK, on Monday.

The most sensitive issue is the establishment of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities with powers to represent Kosovo’s Serb minority. Guerot said that EU has presented Kosovo with 15 models from EU countries on how it could work in Kosovo.

“The idea is not for Kosovo to copy any of them, but perhaps to take as an example. There are models that have functioned well and it’s good to concentrate on one that Kosovo would benefit from,” he added.

Opposition parties in both Pristina and Belgrade have expressed discontent about the agreement, which says the two sides should develop normal, good-neighbourly relations with each other on the basis of equal rights.

The agreement also says Kosovo and Serbia should mutually recognise their respective documents and national symbols, including passports, diplomas, vehicle licence plates and customs stamps.

On international representation, the agreement says the parties should assume that neither of the two can represent the other in the international sphere or act on the other’s behalf.

For years, Kosovo and Serbia have traded accusations over which side is responsible for the failure to implement agreements reached in Brussels since the EU-facilitated dialogue process between the two countries started in 2011, first on technical issues and then involving top political leaders.

Negotiations led to the so-called Brussels Agreement in 2013, which envisaged the establishment of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities to represent Serb interests in those areas of Kosovo where they form the majority.

In 2015, Kosovo and Serbia’s prime ministers signed a deal on the competencies of the Association, but most of them were later ruled unconstitutional by Kosovo courts. Since then, the idea has remained on paper, the casualty of continuing political tensions.