On Friday 7 September, the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo stalled when Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić refused to meet his Kosovan counterpart, Hashim Thaçi.
At the end of "several rounds of talks with both in bilateral format on all issues on the table", High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini acknowledged that "difficulties remain".
Mogherini announced that she would convene the next high level session of the dialogue before the ministerial week of the UN General Assembly (in other words, before 18 September) to bring the two sides together to advance the work on the content of the agreement.
"I trust the full commitment of both presidents to continue the process and reach in the coming months a legally binding agreement on comprehensive normalisation of relations, in line with international law", she added.
While Mogherini has recently been full of hope as to an agreement before the end of her mandate, the situation is tense this Friday. Vučić refused to meet Thaçi because, according to one of the Serbian negotiators quoted by French newspaper Le Monde, "the minimum conditions" have not been met, and there have been "threats and hoaxes" coming from Pristina.
"What is now becoming very clear is that the more we move forward, the more everything becomes complicated", Thaçi told media after the meetings. He said that while "normal work" continued with his Serbian counterpart, "the differences were too big to enable this three-way meeting". (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)