Milica Stojanovic and Xhorxhina BamiBelgrade, PristinaBIRNJanuary 20, 202318:39After separate meetings with the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, Western envoys said they felt reassured after tough but open discussions.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic (3rd from right) with EU and US diplomats in Belgrade, January 20, 2023. Photo: Instagram/buducnostsrbijeav
The European Union special representative for the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, told media in Belgrade on Friday that he and his EU and US colleagues felt “encouraged” after meeting Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Lajcak met Vucic after previously meeting Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti in Pristina together with the US Special Envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, advisors to the President of France and Chancellor of Germany Emmanuel Bonne and Jens Plottner, and adviser to the Prime Minister of Italy Francesco Talo.
Meetings focused mostly on the so-called Franco-German proposal for future relations between Serbia and its former province. Lajcak said talks with Vucic were “very intense, tough but frank and open”.
“President Vucic demonstrated a responsible approach and a willingness to take difficult decisions in the interest of peace and European perspective of Serbia,” Lajcak said in Belgrade.
He added: “For us the overdue implementation of the Association or Community of Serbian Majority Municipalities is a crucial element for stability and we remain convinced that a plan we presented in September and we discussed today is the best way for normalization of relation between Serbia and Kosovo”.
Vucic said after the meeting that he was “unequivocally faced with the problems and challenges that would be put before Serbia if we do not agree with the proposed plan”, without specifying its exact details.
He said he had asked the visitors “to help all of us overcome the turbulence we are facing in Kosovo and Metohija, and we believe that it is time to form the Association of Serbian municipalities, which was not only promised but also signed 10 years ago, and is a matter of urgency, because only after that is it possible for dialogue and a return [by Kosovo Serbs] to [Kosovo] institutions and some kind of normalization of the situation”.
Most Kosovo Serbs have quit Kosovo institutions in protest against the Kosovo government’s policies.
The Pristina government has stalled on implementation of a plan to establish an association of autonomous majority-Serb municipalities.
After meeting Kosovo PM Kurti earlier, Lajcak said that the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss the proposal for the normalization (of relations with Serbia) that was presented in September and then in December”.
Lajcak said the delegation spent more than two hours with Kurti, “which shows the meeting was long, it was not simple, but it was honest and open,” he said.
“However at this point we expected a better understanding of what the proposal offers. I hope we get there and use the full potential of this proposal,” he added.
The Kosovo PM’s office said after the meeting on Friday that the proposal for a final agreement was discussed, explaining that Kurti considers it a “good basis for further discussion to move forward towards full normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia with the mutual recognition in the centre”.
Kurti’s office also said that minority rights were discussed, “within the general frame of an agreement proposed by him on August 18, 2022, in Brussels”.
The Franco-German proposal has never been made public.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti (3rd from right) with with delegation of EU and US diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo, January 23 2023. Photo: Kosovo PM’s Office
In November 2022, Belgrade and Brussels-based media published what they reported was a leaked copy of a so-called ‘Franco-German proposal’.
It requires both sides to “develop normal, good neighbourly relations with each other based on equal rights”; to “reaffirm the inviolability now and in the future of the frontier/boundary existing between them and undertake fully to respect each other’s territorial integrity”; also to exchange “Permanent Missions”; and commit to “mutual respect of each party’s jurisdiction”.
Experts told BIRN in November that the leaked draft, as reported, seemed “almost entirely based” on the 1972 Basic Treaty by which East and West Germany de facto recognised each other, without the word “recognition” actually appearing in the text.
In October 2022, Serbia’s Vucic said that, in essence, the proposal implied Serbia’s acquiescence to Kosovo’s membership of the United Nations in return for Serbia’s “quick entry” into the EU and significant financial benefits.
But a day later, Kosovo Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla said Vucic was only telling “10 per cent of the truth”. The proposal was just “a basis for discussion,” she said.
The existence of the so-called proposal was first reported in September 2022 by the Albanian Post 10 days after envoys of the French president and German chancellor visited Belgrade and Pristina.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Years of EU-mediated talks have failed to resolve the issue of Serbia’s refusal to accept the sovereignty of its former southern province, a refusal that enjoys the backing of Russia, a veto-holder in the UN Security Council.
Keen to stabilise the region against the ripple-effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the EU – five members of which also do not recognise Kosovo – appears to have coalesced around the Franco-German proposal, which the European Union’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell stressed was in fact a “European” proposal.
“The so-called ‘Franco-German proposal’ is in fact the Franco-German support for the proposal presented by me and [EU envoy] Miroslav Lajcak,” he said. “It is a proposal, let’s say as European proposal, that tries to go out of the crisis management mode.”
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