Brussels – A new high-level meeting to “take stock of progress” in the EU-mediated dialogue: The announcement about the new round of talks between the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia is not a tall order, given the premises of the past year and tensions that are still unresolved after the wave of violence since May 2023. The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, announced in a note that tomorrow (June 26), the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, and the Kosovo prime minister, Albin Kurti, will be in Brussels for bilateral meetings and a final trilateral summit.
It has been nine months since the last high-level meeting of the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue in Brussels—unsuccessful and stalled over the Association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo—and, in between, there has been one of the lowest moments for the relations of the two Balkan countries engaged since 2011 in a very complex diplomatic confrontation mediated by the European Union to normalise relations. As relations have indeed not been restored to a normality acceptable to Brussels, a push will have to be made to revive the discourse left unfinished by those 12 hours of discussion in Ohrid, on the shores of the lake in North Macedonia. On March 18, 2023, the green light was given—but without a signature—to the implementation annexe of the very complicated Brussels Agreement reached on February 27 (which defined the specific commitments for Serbia and Kosovo), the real keystone of the whole scaffolding to establish “what is to be done, by when, by whom, and how.” Yet, after more than a year, Belgrade and Pristina are poorly engaged to meet those commitments, and for that reason—before bidding farewell to the institution he represents—Borrell wants to send a final signal that the Union is not letting go.
Tomorrow’s point in Brussels will start with what little progress has been made on three items mentioned already at the high-level meeting on September 14 last year. Namely, the missing persons statement, the announcement on the joint monitoring committee, and the presentation of the draft on the Association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo. This is precisely the point on which the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue is still stalled and on which tensions continue to run high, resulting in dangerous incidents of violence during 2023: the 2013 Brussels Agreement, which was never implemented in the community in the country which should be granted autonomy on a whole range of administrative matters.
The tensions between Kosovo and Serbia
Only two months after the Ohrid understanding, the first event that opened one of the most difficult and violent years for relations between Serbia and Kosovo took place on May 26. The insertion of the newly elected mayors of Zubin Potok, Zvečan, Leposavić, and Kosovska Mitrovica sparked violent protests, which turned into a guerrilla warfare on May 29 that also involved soldiers from the international KFOR mission led by NATO. Tensions erupted over the Kurti government’s decision to bring special police forces to allow mayors elected on April 23 into town halls, in a controversial election round due to very low voter turnout.
Meanwhile, an arrest/kidnapping of three Kosovar policemen by Serbian security services was staged on June 14, with Pristina and Belgrade accusing each other of trespassing by their respective law enforcement agencies. Brussels convened an emergency meeting with PM Kurti and President Vučić to get out of “crisis management mode,” but it was not until June 22 that the three Kosovar policemen were released. But because Pristina failed to take a “constructive attitude” to de-escalate the tension, Brussels imposed “temporary and reversible” measures against Kosovo in late June (still in place, despite the roadmap agreed on July 12). However, the situation escalated with the terrorist attack on September 24 near the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Banjska. On the day of clashes between the Kosovo Police and a group of about 30 gunmen, a policeman and three attackers were killed.
Developments in the attack showed clear branches in neighbouring Serbia. Among the attackers outside the monastery was also Milan Radoičić, deputy head of Lista Srpska (as confirmed by himself a few days after the armed attack), as well as Milorad Jevtić, a close associate of the Serbian president’s son, Danilo Vučić. To make matters worse, the United States reported a Serbian “major military deployment” along the administrative border. The threat did not materialise, but the EU has begun to reflect on the ability to impose against Belgrade the same measures in force against Pristina. But the green light needed unanimity in the Council, and Vučić’s closest ally inside the Union—the Hungarian premier, Viktor Orbán—vetoed. As if that were not enough, before the early elections in Serbia on December 17, the last act of the government led by Ana Brnabić was to send a letter to Brussels to warn that Serbian institutions do not recognise the legal value of the verbal commitments made in the context of the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue and that the de facto sovereignty of Kosovo will not be recognised either. 
The only positive news at the moment is the end of the “battle of the license plates” between Serbia and Kosovo, thanks to the decision between late 2023 and early 2024 on mutual recognition for vehicles entering the border, even given this year’s unpromising assumptions. With the enactment of the Regulation on Transparency and Stability of Financial Flows and Combating Money Laundering and Counterfeiting, as of February 1, the euro became the sole currency of exchange and deposit in bank accounts: the Serbian dinar can still be exchanged on a par with the Albanian lek or the dollar, but the decision will impact all those public services that never adjusted to Pristina’s adoption of the euro in 2002 (even before independence). On February 5, the special police operations at the offices of the temporary institutions run by Serbia in four municipalities in northern Kosovo (Dragash, Pejë, Istog and Klinë) and at the headquarters of the NGO Center For Peace and Tolerance in Pristina raised controversy in Brussels: since 2008 Belgrade has continued to fund municipalities, companies, public enterprises, kindergartens, schools, public universities, and hospitals available to the Serb minority, illegally according to the Kosovo Constitution.
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English version by the Translation Service of Withub
