Brussels, 2 May, 2023
Dear journalists,
Thank you very much for waiting for us until these late hours, for the public statements regarding today’s high-level meeting that took place here in Brussels, with the mediation or facilitation of the Vice-President of the European Commission and the High Representative for Policy Foreign Affairs and Security, Mr. Josep Borrel and his Special Envoy for the Balkans, Mr. Miroslav Lajçak.
We started this high-level meeting on a high and positive note that we jointly agreed on the text of the Agreement, thus transformed into the Agreement on the issue of missing persons, on the issue of forcibly disappeared, forcibly disappeared from the war in Kosovo. We know that there are also 1617 missing persons and here the victims are not only those who were kidnapped but also their families, and the entire people and society.
Among the missing, we have the situation where anger and anxiety are greater than grief and mourning. It is therefore an urgent matter as it was also decided in the Ohrid Implementation Annex, which you attach as an integral part of the Basic Agreement of February 27, made right here in Brussels in the same format.
In today’s meeting, after the agreement on missing persons, we listened patiently and attentively to the Management Team who presented a draft statute, in a total of 67 articles, and then we gave our opinion that such a draft statute, what we heard and read, especially we read, it is fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution, constitutionality, legality, democracy, European values, human rights, minority rights according to European standards, and despite this we will be interested in finding a solution.
Therefore, on this occasion, I proposed a draft vision as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo in relation to Article 7 of the Basic Agreement, taking into consideration Article 10. And in total, in 10 plus 1 point, or 11 points, I have proposed a vision, that is, a draft vision, what should be the values and principles, what should be the framework that regulates the issue of non-majority communities, national minorities, namely the Serbian community in Kosovo.
I believe that it will be treated seriously by the mediators, by the facilitators Borrel and Lajçak, because in that way we will be able to build something good, something new, fair, true, useful for everyone, not only for the Serbs, because the Serbs must live in our country, be members with rights and obligations in our society and in this way together create a society which is internally cohesive and which does not leave anyone behind. This was the vision that I presented.
On this occasion, I must emphasize that I submitted to the mediators a document on how from February 27, when we agreed on the Basic Agreement, official Belgrade has violated it. And from that document it is clearly seen, factually documented, that out of 11 articles of the Basic Agreement, 8 of them have been violated by official Belgrade. So, only in the months of March and April, 8 out of 11 articles were violated.
Also, I submitted a document with three statements of the president of Serbia, how he says that he has not agreed with the Basic Agreement, as a European proposal, how he will not implement it in its entirety, so I needed a guarantee that we have the solidity of the process since we have an agreement, and we have security as parties, since we have an agreement, and this was clearly told to me by the mediators Borrel and Lajçak, that we have an agreement, so the agreement exists, and February 27 in Brussels and March 18 in Ohrid happened at the same time. So, they are events in which we are both actors and witnesses, so they cannot be denied by anyone.
I also gave them a document to show that the coordinator of the Management Team Ms. Danijela Vujičić, in fact, took an oath in the Serbian Parliament and she is in a conflict of interest. So, I have listed some facts about the Management Team coordinator.
But what is clear today is that with the presentation of this draft statute, it can be said that the Management Team has been decommissioned, since it no longer has a function, role or status. They submitted the draft. I told them in a reasoned, reasonable, logical way that it is fundamentally incompatible with constitutionality and therefore it is good that we start discussions on the basis of a draft value vision as soon as possible, what I have proposed today.
The draft statute proposed by the Management Team, which today decommissioned itself on the occasion of the presentation of the draft statute, is the result of the desire for Republika Srpska in Kosovo.
There is clearly a desire for Republika Srpska in Kosovo and this desire has written this statute.
Meanwhile, the draft vision that I proposed, I can say that it was inspired by an agreement that Serbia has already made for normalization. It is the agreement between Serbia and Croatia. Serbia and Croatia have an agreement for the normalization of relations, which also foresees rights and protective provisions for the Serbian national minority in Croatia. And I was inspired by that model, since as you know from the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Croatia emerged as an independent state and we, as the Republic of Kosovo, are part of the same process of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Taking into account that Croatia is a member of the European Union, is also a member of NATO, and has normalized relations with Serbia, and we, as the Republic of Kosovo, aspire to both NATO and the European Union, I believe that it has been a model of exactly where I got the inspiration to write this draft vision in 11 points or in 10 plus 1 to be more precise.
There will be other meetings in the future. So, I have come in good faith, with good will, with good intentions, so that as soon as possible we fully implement the Brussels Agreement and the Ohrid annex as an integral part, because we need European normalization and good neighborliness between the two our countries Republic of Kosovo and Serbia.
Last modified: May 3, 2023