Kosovo cannot have a final agreement with Serbia before establishing the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities.
This was made clear on Thursday by the Special Representative of EU for Prishtina-Belgrade dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak on his third day in Kosovo where he held around 25 meetings.
“There will be no agreement without association, Kosovo made its commitments, Kosovo signed the agreement, Kosovo parliament ratified it, so Kosovo must implement this agreement and it is part of the process, it is part of negotiations, it is part of the dialogue,” Lajcak said during a press conference.
Kosovo leaders have constantly insisted that the issue is not going to be back on the dialogue table.
“When some politicians are saying that the case is closed it means they don’t want to open the text, and we are not asking to reopen it, we are asking to implement what was signed,” Lajcak said referring to these statements.
Lajcak said that the Association must be agreed as part of the negotiation for a comprehensive agreement “because there must be no lack of clarity of any issues at the moment of signing the signature”.
“The Agreement on the Association of Serbian Municipalities was already reached in Brussels in 2013 but it is not implemented, there is also an opinion by the Constitutional Court, but the Constitutional Court never said that Association should not be established. Constitutional Court said it should be established as with the opinion or the decision of the Constitutional Court,” he added.
In December 2015 the Kosovo Constitutional Court ruling found incompatibilities between the agreement and the country’s constitution which it recommended should be amended.
Commenting on the Kosovo Serbs warnings that they would leave the institutions if Kosovo does not establish the Association, Lajcak said that there is no reason for such a move.
“When I met with the representatives of Srpska Lista [the Serbian List], they have no reason to leave the institutions because all my partners clearly confirmed that this was agreed and will be discussed,” Lajcak said.
“I did not meet any single partner these three days who would have any problem with that,” he added.
Lajcak called the process of normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia as sensitive and difficult.
He added that two important issues of the process are the one on missing persons and displaced persons and the economic cooperation between two countries.
During his three days visit in Prishtina, Lajcak met institutional leaders, the leaders of political parties, including those of non- Albanian communities represented in Parliament and representatives of international community in Kosovo.
The EU special envoy for Kosovo- Serbia dialogue will stay in Serbia where he will also have meetings with the state officials.
