In the framework of the Kosovo Peace and Democracy Summit, which is being held today in Prishtina, the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue and the need for a new start in this process were also discussed.

In the discussion panel on this issue, the Deputy Director for the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Tefta Kelmendi, said that the dialogue with Serbia is a challenging process, but it has no way out. According to her, the parties should be constructive in this process.

“From the very start of the beginning of the mandate of this government, we knew that the dialogue with Serbia, and engaging in a dialogue with Serbia is going to be one of its biggest challenge. And it needed to adapt the strategy in which it engages in a dialogue or while making sure that the public support for the ruling party doesn’t erode. This, I will come back to the strategy a little later, but regardless of the rhetoric and the general in systems of the current government in the beginning of the of the engagement in the dialogue, on the principle of sovereignty, mutual recognition, territorial integrity. The Kosovo government has expressed a form of preparedness and corporation in the early stages to engage in a dialogue with Serbia. This has concretized with the fact that it has accepted and taken part in the two high-level meetings that took place in June and July 2021. We also know that these were very difficult meetings, apparently the chemistry wasn’t right, the parties had very opposite views on how they see the dialogue moving forward that we must acknowledge that the dialogue happened that this allows for the platform to continue and the Kosovo government participates in it. This actually even concretized that there was a continuation of technical level of discussions that took place, also high level meetings, which ended up in culminated with an agreement that was reached in Brussles and Ohrid on its implementation, and here again, we must acknowledge that Kosovo government accepted the agreement, despite difficulties of reaching the agreement, despite a lot of negotiations that took place, before the agreement was reached. But it accepted it and we must acknowledge it accepted also within the agreement the formation of the Association of Serb municipalities”, she said.

Meanwhile, Dragisa Mijacic from the Institute for Territorial Economic Development (InTER), said that the dialogue so far has not been favorable for the Serbian community in Kosovo.

“We are living in a challenging, I wanted to say a radical reality, but let’s put a little bit nice word in a challenging reality, and this challenge in reality, especially came with this government. So it started like four years when this government came, it changed the reality on the ground, in various ways, with unilateral and uncoordinated actions and that changed a lot of things on the ground. For better or worse, we don’t know, things are still moving. But it creates the changes. And it creates the changes alongside of the dialogue. So, the dialogue itself hasn’t been helpful in this regard. International Community didn’t have an answer or haven’t had an answer for this one. So we saw a lot of statements from QUINT countries, you saw a lot of statements from the EU, we saw to some policy response from all these international actors, but, reality is going is deteriorating, is coming from bad to worse”, he said.

The Consulting Senior Analyst, International Crisis Group (ICG), Marko Prelex, said that dialogue has no alternative, but emphasized that compromise is needed from both sides.

“There will not be an alternative to the dialogue, whatever you do at the end of the day, is going to involve the same four actors that we have now, the government in Belgrade, the government in Prishtina, the European Union in some composition and with the support of the United States, is simply no other way you can do it. So that’s true. On the other hand, I think to say that is not to say that we don’t need a reset. Because I think if you look historically at what the dialogue has been since roughly, what 2011 or so when it started in a technical basis until today, it has had, at least in my interpretation, a consistent sort of core, offer to the two parties, which was a compromise, in which Kosovo for its part, would extend, and I’m aware that this is a controversial word in the Kosovar political lexicon, I just can’t think of a better alternative, so, I’m not using it in a tendentious way, would extend some kind of autonomy, some kind of additional rights of self-government to its Serb minority, and in return, Serbia would extend something like that can be described as a kind of defacto recognition to Kosovo”, he said.