Kurti and Vucic meet tomorrow in Brussels

2024-06-25 19:09:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Kurti and Vucic meet tomorrow in Brussels

Albin Kurti and Aleksander Vucic

The European Union is expected to bring together the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, and the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, on Wednesday in an effort to revive the process of normalizing relations between the two countries, according to an agreement that the parties agreed on last year past.

The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, did not show much expectation from tomorrow's meeting, but expressed the hope of taking steps towards the implementation of the agreement...

"Because we already have an agreement, we have the Ohrid agreement. The problem with the agreements is that they have to be implemented and the parties have not been able to implement them, for one reason or another," he said.

The two leaders have not met since September of last year and have not yet taken steps to fulfill the obligations arising from the agreement despite all the pressure from the bloc. Kosovo has not yet started the process of establishing the Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority, while Serbia has said that it will not implement the parts of the agreement that lead to the 'de facto' or 'de jure' recognition of Kosovo.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Monday that Serbia will behave constructively and try to solve problems through dialogue. He said that he does not believe in the will of the other party to participate in the formation of the Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority.

Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti said that the meeting will be in function of an assessment of the process of talks and discussion of ideas for moving forward.

"For my strong conviction, the basic agreement of February 27 of last year, with the integral part - the implementation annex of March 18 from Ohrid, makes the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia with de facto recognition, at least de facto, central. Therefore, this is the European solution of good neighborliness, but which has not been realized until today, because before we even implemented the agreement, we had a systematic violation of it, which culminated in the letter of the former Serbian Prime Minister Bërnabiq from December 13 last year, when Serbia practically withdrew from the basic agreement, and that's where all the problems come from," said Prime Minister Kurti.

The European Union has emphasized several times that the agreement, although not signed, is legally binding for both parties.

Mr. Borrell said that it is necessary to resume the high-level meetings to know where the process is, at a time when the member countries of the bloc are discussing the proposal for the removal of punitive measures against Kosovo that were imposed due to the tensions in the north her.

"If these measures are lifted, I hope so, at least that's my proposal, even if it happens step by step, but quickly, it could create a scenario in which the dialogue, I'm not saying will continue, but at least it won't it closes suddenly," Mr. Borrell said.

The representatives of the member countries of the European Union opened the discussion last week on the possibility of lifting the punitive measures against Kosovo, which had been conditional on the removal of special police units from municipal buildings and the organization of new elections for mayors of municipalities inhabited by a majority of Serbs. in the north of Kosovo.

The government agreed to organize new elections, through a vote for the dismissal of the current presidents, which failed in April, due to the boycott of the votes by members of the Serbian community./ VOA