The EU Special Representative for the Dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, Miroslav Lajčák, felt that it was time to conclude this process and reach an agreement between the two parties. This dialogue enters its tenth year in 2021.
“During these ten years, the Dialogue has produced a number of very concrete results, but the time has come to put an end to this process, towards a conclusion called a ’comprehensive agreement on the normalisation of relations’”, he stressed during a discussion organised by the German Embassy in the United States on Tuesday 12 January (see EUROPE 12579/37).
According to him, the objective is not a 1,000-page document, but a clear document on the implementation of the agreement, with a timetable, which goes “beyond political declarations”.
The EU Special Representative recalled that the EU was trying both to ensure that what had been previously defined was fully implemented and to address new issues, such as the settlement of mutual financial/asset claims.
Furthermore, while recalling that the EU was not forcing the parties to normalise their relations and that they should be ready to do so, Mr Lajčák recalled that the parties “know that they will not come closer to the EU without the normalisation of their relations”.
If the two teams are ready and committed, we can have an agreement and this can be counted in terms of months, certainly not years, added the EU representative, while specifying that no deadline should be set, as this would be artificial.
Negotiations are currently on hold, awaiting a new government in Kosovo. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)