Sorensen: EU expects joint commission to clarify fate of missing persons

2026-01-23 14:16:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Peter Sorensen, the European envoy for the dialogue, has said that the European Union (EU) has high expectations from a joint commission between Kosovo and Serbia to clarify the fate of missing persons during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.

Sorensen confirmed in a statement on Friday that Kosovo and Serbia held the first trilateral meeting of the joint commission on missing persons on Thursday in Brussels.

" The European Union has high expectations that the Joint Commission will make a significant contribution to clarifying the fate of missing persons and helping to close a painful chapter for families who have waited too long for answers ," he said.

Nearly 1,600 people are still missing – most of them Albanians – from the 1998-99 war.

He explained that the parties had reached agreement on the establishment of this commission in December 2024.

The Commission stems from the Joint Declaration on Missing Persons, which Kosovo and Serbia reached an agreement on in 2023 in Brussels as part of the dialogue for the normalization of relations.

Sorensen said on Friday that the purpose of the joint commission is to oversee the implementation of this declaration, "which aims to contribute to clarifying the fate of persons still missing, including those forcibly disappeared, to provide closure to their families, and to promote reconciliation and lasting peace."

Sorensen held lengthy talks separately with Kosovo's chief negotiator, Besnik Bislimi, and Serbia's, Petar Petkovic, on Thursday in Brussels.

At the end of those meetings, in the evening hours, he held the first tripartite meeting of the joint commission.

After the meetings, Bislimi said that "the goal was to reach an agreement so that today we can operationalize the joint commission for implementation."

"The meetings were successful and in the end we managed to finally implement this objective ," Bislimi added.

Meanwhile, Petar Petkovic said that this was "the first meeting of the joint commission for the implementation of the Declaration on Missing Persons."

"This is extremely important and significant and I hope that after this first meeting all processes towards finding all missing persons will be accelerated," said Petkovic./ REL