Friday, March 29

The EU fails to strike a truce between Serbia and Kosovo


Updated

The Balkan leaders confirm their differences in the community capital. Josep Borrell affirms that he “does not give up” and bets everything on new talks over the next few days.

Borrell statement at the EU headquartersJOHN THYSAFP
  • voltage NATO calls for calm in the ‘powder’ in the Balkans
  • International Kosovo Serbs threaten to unilaterally declare their autonomy

“Today’s meeting was not a normal or regular meeting. It was a crisis management meeting,” he assured Joseph BorrellHigh Representative for Foreign Affairsat the end of the high-level meeting held in Brussels between the Serbian president, alexander vucicand the Kosovar Prime Minister, Albin Kurdi. The meeting ended without agreement. And it speeds up the hands of the clock, which are already running unstoppably towards that September 1, when the so-called “license plate war” threatens to reactivate.

The lack of reaching a common point did not leave any great surprises in the community capital. Already before the third face-to-face between the serbian and the kosovarin Brussels it was perceived as the only good news that the two leaders shared the same table after more than a year later. Borrell welcomed the Balkan leaders in Brussels with many ambitions, but with few illusions because the tension of the last days in the north of kosovo I was already anticipating a high-voltage encounter.

“[La escalada] comes at a critical time for Europe. With the Russian invasion Ukraine we have seen the return of war to our continent. For this reason, this is not the time to add additional tensions, but to find solutions to entrenched problems”, assured the head of European diplomacy during the subsequent press conference. European External Action Service (EEAS) He admitted that he “doesn’t give up.” The dialogue will continue over the next few days, but nervousness is growing within Europe in the face of new sources of tension on its borders. The war in Ukraine, the tension between USA Y China or the time bomb that is already the Sahel, make us fear more global volatility with a new focus on the powder keg of the Balkans.

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The former foreign minister The Spanish trust that the talks will resume “in the next few days.” “It is not the end of the story. There is time until September 1. I do not give up,” he advanced. Borrell, which, however, hardly gave details of what format and under what schedule this dialogue will take place. And the worst enemy is time. remain alone two weeks for Kosovar legislation to come into force which replaces the Serbian identity document and license plates with Kosovar ones at its border posts. The measure has been postponed several times. The last one at the beginning of August. But if approved, it would unleash an unpredictable wave of tension in northern Kosovo that has already pushed the NATO to speak out ensuring that it is willing to intervene to guarantee stability.

The EU sponsor the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina since 2011. This format is, de facto, the only official one for both to advance in the normalization of relations. But after a decade of intermittent meetings, the results show little progress and many frustrations.

The main candy that the community teaches the Balkans is to emphasize that good relations are a non-negotiable requirement to be part of the EU. Serbia, which opened accession negotiations in 2014, is one of the most advanced countries in the enlargement process. On the other hand, the status of Kosovo is reduced to that of the candidate country. pristine It also has the handicap that five Member States, including Spain, does not recognize it as an independent and sovereign country. Something that became clear again after the last tour of President Pedro Sánchez in the region, where he reiterated that “Spain is and will be at Serbia’s side in the Kosovo dispute”.

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