EU mediator Miroslav Lajčak will visit Pristina and Belgrade on Friday, with special advisors to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to explore possibilities for progress in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, European Commission spokesperson Peter Stano told Serbian media BETA.
The lead spokesperson for European External Action Service head Josep Borrell stressed that the EU welcomed Macron and Scholz’s support to the EU-mediated dialogue and the related efforts of involved stakehoders.
Lajčak, Jens Ploetner, and Emmanuel Bonne, the leading foreign and security policy advisors to Scholz and Macron respectively, are slated to meet with Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti in Pristina, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade.
Macron and Scholz sent a letter on Sunday to Vucic and Kurti, saying that the full normalisation of relations is essential to the Western Balkans and that they had charged their foreign and security policy advisors to provide direct support to the EU’s envoy for the dialogue, Miroslav Lajčak.
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Macron and Scholz wrote in the joint letter that in light of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, more effort needed to be invested to make the European outlook of Western Balkan countries a reality.
Recent tensions have shown that constructive steps forward are desperately needed, practical as well as political, it continued.
“We have therefore charged our foreign and security policy advisers, Jens Ploetner and Emmanuel Bonne, to extend direct support to Miroslav Lajčak in his endeavours. We propose that our advisers, together with Lajčak, visit Kosovo and Serbia to investigate the possibility of quickly moving the process forward,” the letter concludes.
Career diplomats Ploetner and Bonne are the main foreign policy and security advisers to Scholz and Macron and have already worked together to defuse the crisis between Moscow and Kyiv, and preparing meetings in the quadrilateral, so-called Normandy format.
