A European Union bid to breathe new life into stalled negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo fell through Wednesday (26 June), with Serbia’s president and the Kosovo prime minister failing to meet as planned.
The sitdown was supposed to happen nearly a year after the bitter rivals last met, following repeated rounds of unsuccessful negotiations.
Both Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti had separate meetings with EU representatives, but according to EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell, “no progress in implementation of the agreement could be achieved”.
“This time, it has not been a trilateral meeting,” Borell said.
Talks between Serbia and Kosovo aimed at hammering out a landmark deal to pave the way for a semblance of normalised ties all but crumbled last year.
During a high-stakes summit in North Macedonia in March 2023, Vucic refused to sign the EU- and US-backed Ohrid agreement, citing a pain in his right hand that would likely last “years”.
Diplomats have continued to call for the implementation of the agreement, but the unsigned deal remains unenforced by either side.
Borrell said the EU would “continue putting all our efforts and capacity at the service of the normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia”.
These efforts will continue next week, Borrel said, when he will host the two negotiators in Brussels.
Vucic blamed Kurti for the talks failing to materialise, saying his Kosovan counterpart “did not dare to meet”.
Kurti countered by saying that he had put down conditions for the meeting with Vucic to take place, including the handing over of Milan Radoicic — the former vice president of Kosovo’s leading Serb party which admitted to leading a commando squad that ambushed a Kosovo police patrol in September last year.
As last year’s talks collapsed, bouts of unrest erupted in Serb-majority areas across northern Kosovo.
Tensions continued to flare after the Pristina government made the euro its only legal currency recognised in its territory in February — effectively outlawing the use of the Serbian dinar currency.
That put pressure on Serbia’s ability to continue financing a parallel health, education, and social security systems for Kosovo Serbs.
Kurti has defended the move as a means to crack down on the large amounts of cash pouring into Kosovo from Serbia and to bring organised crime groups to heel.
Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has raged since the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s that drew a NATO intervention against Belgrade, which views Kosovo as a breakaway region.
Pristina declared independence in 2008, a move Serbia has refused to acknowledge as it views Kosovo as the nation’s historic homeland.
EU toughens Belarus sanctions to curb Russia evasion
Brussels, Belgium, June 26, 2024 (AFP) - EU countries on Wednesday agreed new sanctions on Belarus over the Ukraine war to align them more closely with measures targeting Russia, in a bid to curb evasion of the penalties, officials said.
"EU Ambassadors agreed in principle on a new package of sanctions targeting Belarus," announced Belgium, which holds the EU's rotating presidency.
"This package will strengthen our measures in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including combating circumvention of sanctions," it said.
The European Union has gone after the government of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, the Kremlin's closest ally, for allowing his country to be used as a staging post for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Bringing the sanctions on Belarus more into line with those on Moscow is seen as vital for stemming the flow to Russia of banned goods, such as microchips, that can be used on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Officials say Belarus has acted as a backdoor to get sanctioned products from the EU into Russia, as they could be officially exported to Belarus before heading on to its giant neighbour.
"Belarus must no longer serve as a route to circumvent our sanctions against Russia. With this package we increase the pressure on both countries and make our sanctions against Russia even more effective," EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on X.
The push to strengthen the sanctions on Belarus, which is in a customs union with Russia, was stalled for over a year as efforts to relax restrictions on its lucrative fertiliser exports were blocked by Lithuania.
Some EU states argued that fertiliser exports should be allowed to help alleviate problems with food supplies in developing nations.
But the Baltic state argued that third countries had already moved to obtain supplies from elsewhere, and that removing restrictions on Belarus would see revenues worth billions of dollars flow to Belarusian authorities.
EU diplomats said no exemptions had been granted for fertiliser exports.
Before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EU had already targeted Lukashenko's government with repeated rounds of sanctions over its crackdown on protests.
The 27-nation bloc has hit Russia with an unprecedented 14 packages of sanctions over its war on Ukraine.