Only days after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stated that Serbia will not be forced to recognize Kosovo—and that he has repeated again and again that Serbia will not allow UN recognition of Serbia’s neighbor—European Union High Representative Josep Borrell stated that Serbia and Kosovo must find common ground in order to eventually join the EU.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Borrell said that Serbia and Kosovo must “increase their will” to come to terms if both would like to get back on the “European path.”
He also emphasized that both NATO and the EU will continue to work for security in Kosovo.
Yet even though Vucic has in the past pointed to Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s unwillingness to agree to a proposed EU agreement that would ostensibly put both states on the path to “normalizsation”—he has in fact been consistent with his refusal to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, which would lead UN recognition of Kosovo as well.
„I’ve already said a thousand times that I won’t [sign off on such an agreement],” Vucic said this week, as cited by the B92 website. “I said that to the face of Scholz, Macron and Meloni. Charles Michel, Borrell and Lajcak were also present. I said that in front of six of them. I told them that before.”
During the most recent talks in Brussels, which took place in early November, it was, however, Kurti who declined to sign a normalization agreement proffered by the EU, staing that he would not agree to a Community of Serb Municipalities (CSM) in North Kosovo until after Serbia recognized Kosovo as independent. This was clearly a no-go with Vucic, as the CSM has been a priority since it was agreed upon by all sides in 2013.
Photo by Gobierno de Guatemala from Guatemala, Guatemala, PDM-owner, via Wikimedia Commons.
