Time for the EU to take ownership of the Serbia-Kosovo process

In the Western Balkans, good things happen when the West is resolute, and the opposite is true when there is drift or apathy sets in. EU leaders would do well to bear this in mind when they meet for the EU-Western Balkans summit this week, write Michael Keating and Senad Šabović.

Michael Keating is the executive director and Senad Šabović is a senior advisor of the European Institute of Peace (EIP).

The EU now has the opportunity to confound its critics and fully grip the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue. With the Banjska incident showing the potential for violence, an international plan has been crafted and the parties have signalled in-principle acceptance. This needs to be followed up.

Failure to seize this moment creates space for further negative dynamics on the ground. It will also impact Western and EU credibility in its own backyard – in a region that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to as potentially the next venue for Russia to cause another headache.

It is crucial to stem the current downward spiral, and ideally to harvest the positive dividends from investment.

A high point in the normalization process was the 2013 agreement, which provided for the integration of the northern – Serb-majority – region into Kosovo’s institutions.

Then followed a period of stagnation with each year worse than the last. In 2022, the situation came to a head with protests and stand-offs between local Serbs and the police in northern Kosovo.

Without decisive action, it was clear the situation would worsen.

This triggered a plan by French and German diplomats, presumably in close coordination with EU Dialogue facilitator Miroslav Lajčak.  It was backed by the United States, adopted by the EU, and ultimately accepted by Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.

Western arm-twisting worked and a milestone was achieved. It was supposed to end the cycle of crises in northern Kosovo and make for next-level normalization. That, however, did not happen.

Implementation remains blocked and a range of problems loom.  These include ambiguity over the parties’ acceptance of the agreement, followed by breaches of commitments and an escalation with a Kosovo police intervention in the north and a major clash between local Serbs and NATO peacekeepers that left close to a hundred soldiers wounded.

Then came the Serb paramilitary attack at Banjska in September which was considered the worst escalation in a decade, resulting in the death of a Kosovo policeman and three deaths among the attackers.

So, what can be done? Some will say ‘nothing’. Why bother if the parties refuse to see value in the process?

But where does that get us?  Most likely facing stagnation, freer play for undesirable influences, and possibly even an armed confrontation and more bloodshed.

Beyond the obvious loss of life and damage to infrastructure, what would such a scenario do to the EU’s and Euro-Atlantic credibility? The Western Balkans has been a region of strong Western intervention. A failure here is also a failure for the West.

Western attention is the only thing that makes the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue work.  It needs to be stepped up. The Dialogue has to be rebooted.  This is the best way to express Western resolve.  It must include a mechanism for robust follow-up.

The EU and its key Western partners need to formulate a set of interrelated measures in this process and insist on their full acceptance by the Dialogue parties. They would work in unison to inject fresh momentum into the process.

How can that be done?

The first step is to empower the EU’s role by vesting the EU facilitator with the authority to call non-compliance by either party and make corresponding declarations.

Faced with growing insecurity, the EU needs to put its foot on the accelerator and not the brakes. This will be crucial to securing full agreement by the parties to the plan that has been on the table since October for sequencing. This needs to become a central benchmark for measuring compliance.

Another core element will be to approve a set of measures to sanction non-compliance and reward compliance and place them at the disposal of the EU Dialogue facilitators. There need to be both carrots and sticks.

This would ensure an immediate check on breaches and would become the key deterrence.

This would be more credible if the plan also had a security element.  In line with what NATO started after Banjska, this would involve a commitment to reinforcing Kosovo’s sense of security and enhancing mutual stabilisation commitments for northern Kosovo.

An independent civil society monitoring and implementation support mechanism will also be needed to ensure sustainability.

This approach may seem like a tall order under the present circumstances, though the alternative is far worse. The Western Balkans risks boiling over.

The region has generally been a positive example of international peacebuilding – with the EU at the centre – and success in overcoming the current problems could give a much-needed boost of confidence at a time of growing insecurity.