Brussels, 15 May 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 meetings held within the dialogue process.
After the end of the meetings, when asked by the journalists, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi said that “I think that the results should not have been expected today.” It is the beginning of discussions so that we are clear about where we are with the process and where we want to go, but it is not that we waited today to complete any of the processes.”
Regarding what was on the agenda today, he reiterated that it was “Everything related to the implementation of the Basic Agreement of February 27. The sequencing for us has been the central part. We have had a proposal from Mr. Lajcak, where we have had many of our remarks. We made the proposals in this draft document of Mr. Lajcak where we expanded the domain and wanted to make sure that each article of the Basic Agreement is represented in the activity of its implementation. The Serbian side has not sent any proposal but has said that we are only interested in the part of the Association and then we will talk about the rest. However, there was no readiness from the Serbian side to discuss today in order to jointly come up with an implementation plan.
Next, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi was asked if the topics that were discussed in the high-level meetings on May 2 and the situation in the north were also discussed:
“The situation in the north has not been addressed at all today. For the high-level meeting on May 2, it was not part of the meeting today, but there were documents brought to us by Mr. Lajcak in his visit on May 11 to Pristina. He brought, for example, a draft of what the terms of reference for the Joint Committee dealing with the monitoring of the Basic Agreement should look like, a draft document for the terms of reference for the Joint Committee dealing with the implementation of the Missing Persons Agreement and a methodology on how he sees further work around the implementation of point 7 of the Basic Agreement. The two documents that I mentioned at the beginning arrived on Thursday and therefore it was impossible for us to come up with complete answers today, but we have promised to submit them by Friday, after consolidating all the comments coming from the engaged parties.
Meanwhile, regarding the methodology, we said that we cannot build a methodology for one of the points of the agreement without having an implementation plan for the agreement as a whole, and therefore the same was not discussed at all,” said Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi.
On the sequencing of the implementation of the agreement, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi replied that “There is a difference between what we say as subjective parties and what we have agreed upon. In the Implementation Annex that we have agreed on in Ohrid, it is clearly stated that none of the articles can condition the other article and all articles will be implemented independently and it is also stated that the parties cannot block the implementation of any specific article. This is a guide for us, what has been agreed upon. I don’t believe that there is a willingness from the EU to let go of a document that they themselves brought and have publicly on their website.”
On what is the starting point of the discussion for the implementation of point 7 of the basic agreement, it was clarified that: “On the implementation of point 7, today it was specified by Mr. Lajcak that what appeared on his Facebook page was a technical error. The draft is not treated as a starting point, but the presentation of the draft, the act of presentation marks the starting point of discussions on the implementation of point 7, as we have said several times in our public pronouncements. Other parts are then those criteria we talked about that are very important. From the Serbian side, it was said today that they are not interested in the Constitution of Kosovo, they are not interested in Mogherini’s letter either, they are only interested in what they received from Mr. Isa Mustafa in 2015 and Mr. Petkovic also read what they received from Mr. In 2015, Mustafa said that this is how we love the association.
On the next meetings and the continuation of the process, Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi said: “We have not specified today how it will proceed. I think the Monitoring Group cannot meet without agreeing terms of reference. This also applies to the Working Group, or the Joint Committee on Missing Persons. In the draft sent by Mr. Lajcak said that the first meeting of the Joint Committee for the implementation of the Agreement on Missing Persons should be held within 60 days, which means no later than the beginning or middle of July. Now May 28 is not a date for us to worry about, because we have a democratic process behind us and it is very normal for this democratic process to be finalized with the appointment and swearing in of the current presidents. We have informed Mr. Lajcak for the problems that have been encountered unilaterally in several buildings in the north of Mitrovica, Zubin Potok, Leposaviq and Zveçan and for which there has been no response from the EU. The reason was that they don’t have enough information, but I think that this will be resolved very soon after the information is sent by Kosovo because we believe that EULEX being present in Kosovo, it was necessary that all this information take it to Mr. Lajcak.”
“I am afraid that the message that is being sent is the opposite of what is desired. As long as we say that the inauguration of the presidents can cause tensions, one can understand this as an invitation for tensions. In a way, it seems like an invitation that if you want to prevent this, you have to create tensions and we think that this is very dangerous and unnecessary at this stage.” Deputy Prime Minister Bislimi concluded.
Last modified: May 16, 2023