Brussels, 19 July 2023
The first Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Development and Dialogue of the Republic of Kosovo, Besnik Bislimi, stayed today in Brussels where he participated in the next round of negotiations at the level of chief negotiators, within the dialogue process. He had a bilateral meeting with the Special Representative of the European Union for the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue and other regional issues of the Western Balkans, Miroslav Lajčák.
In this meeting, 4 main topics were discussed. The first topic was that of the sequencing plan for the implementation of the Basic Agreement, for which Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi said that:
“It has been seen the need to work further on the concretization of some important documents to ensure full implementation of the Basic Agreement. In terms of sequencing, we have concerns with the current drafts that Mr. Lajcak has sent to our parties, because we think that plan is initially selective, leaves aside some important provisions of the Basic Agreement, unilaterally pays more attention to the demands and preferences of Serbia and also does not guarantee full implementation of the agreement. In this direction, we have tried today together with the Serbian side, in a trilateral meeting, to establish all the obligations that the parties undertake from the Basic Agreement, in a detailed sequencing plan. We have not managed to complete this mission, but we have improvement or moving forward.”
“Unfortunately, there was no trilateral meeting, but Mr. Lajçak thought that this cannot happen at this stage because it does not guarantee the final concretization of the implementation plan. We have listed and given in writing to the EU all our demands or obligations that we think should fall on the Serbian side and should be concretized through the implementation plan. Now we wait for the next steps.”
The next topic was that of the terms of reference for the Joint Commission regarding the implementation of the Missing Persons Declaration: “Here we have some comments, most of which have been welcomed and accepted by Mr. Lajcak. There is only one substantial comment left that they have to deal with and I think that this document is very close to the final adoption that would pave the way and make the Joint Commission functional.” said Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi.
The third topic discussed is about the terms of reference for the Joint Committee, which deals with monitoring the implementation of the Basic Agreement: “Here too, our side has presented comments that are mainly related to the need for the Joint Committee to remain within the foreseen frameworks and in the Basic Agreement, which means a committee that deals only with monitoring the implementation of the agreement and does not have decision-making, executive powers, it cannot replace other bodies and I think that here we have had a common language, we have exchanged documents and here too we look forward to further progress.” Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi explained.
The fourth topic is that of energy. In this regard, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi explained that “In the last meeting we had in Brussels, there was a misinterpretation by the EU about what the agreement that guarantees the signing of the contract should look like. In Bratislava, this misunderstanding has been eliminated and we think that we are very close to signing the contract between Keds and Elektrosever.”
Asked by journalists about the punitive measures of the EU, he said that: “The agreement (of Bratislava) is about the implementation of EU requirements and responds to these requirements. It has been clear to us from the beginning that this is the way to remove the punitive measures against Kosovo and it is a surprise that we still do not have an explanatory letter from Mr. Borrell demanding the lifting of the measures by the European Commission.”
In the end, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi explained in more detail about the sequencing plan and Kosovo’s requirements: “From our proposals today in the bilateral meeting with Mr. Lajçak, we have indicated for each measure or action, from which article of the Basic Agreement it originates and we have asked for an interpretation from the EU on whether they agree that this measure originates from the Basic Agreement or not.”
“As long as it cannot be documented that Kosovo’s demands do not derive from the Basic Agreement, it is a problem for the EU to say that these should not be part of the implementation, for the reason that the Basic Agreement must be implemented in full.”
“We have asked for complete clarification of the steps in order to respect the very criteria given by the EU, which states that the implementation should be in a consecutive manner where Kosovo does something and Serbia does something. For every measure, for every action that is required by Kosovo, we have asked to know what is the counteraction from the side of Serbia, and I think it will be problematic for the Serbian side to argue that they do not want to implement any part of the agreement or want that move the main part of the agreement to the end, for the reason that the criterion of actions where both parties do something must be fully respected.” concluded Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi.
Last modified: July 20, 2023