MPs gather at hall, missing Serbian List

While the session for the demarcation vote is expected, without last night's marathon debate, Serb List deputies are missing in the Kosovo Assembly Hall, nor MP Adem Hoxha are missing.

Of the Serb community present in the hall is only Slobodan Petrovic from the SLS ranks.

The Kosovo Assembly is expected today to proceed with the vote for ratification of the border demarcation agreement with Montenegro. The demarcation vote follows the debate of about nine hours that took place Tuesday at the extraordinary session, which ended in the early hours of the morning day of Wednesday.

Earlier this year, in three cases the Parliament has interrupted the session by failing to proceed with the vote for demarcation, due to lack of votes needed for ratification. Therefore, even today, whether the number of 80 deputies, or two-thirds of the total number, remains in question, has been managed to ensure that the vote is prosecuted.

Before the start of the session, Parliament Speaker Kadri Wessel has hosted the ambassadors of European Union member states and the chief of the EU Office in Kosovo, Nataliya Apostolova.

The time has come for us to complete this play and it will end today. We will vote on the agreement to mark the border line, which means strengthening sovereignty and at the same time strengthening partnership with the European Union, visa liberalisation and opening the perspective of citizens and the state towards integration of European co-operation” said Wessel.

We will not allow for anyone's ego, for no one's mistakes that this could be ours, this sacrifice of our citizens would be in vain”, he stressed.

While the head of the EU office in Kosovo, Nataliya Apostolova, has called on Kosovo's Parliament deputies to vote in favour of the Demarcing Agreement with Montenegro, in order to enable citizens to move freely to the Schengen area.

Currently, the agreement on demarcation is being supported by the ruling parties, such as the Democratic Party of Kosovo, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, the Social Democrat Initiative, the New Kosovo Alliance, as well as the opposition Democratic League of Kosovo party.

But despite this fact, within these political subjects there are deputies who are keeping it in dilemmas and questioning their vote for or against the demarcation, with which they are keeping the whole process of ratification of the agreement complicated.

While the Vetevendosje Movement, the Group of Independent Deputies, and the Serbian List have been positioned against the agreement.

The border demarcation agreement with Montenegro was signed in August 2015 in Vienna. Meanwhile, Montenegro's Assembly has ratified this agreement, but not that of Kosovo, due to lack of internal consensus.

The lack of ratification is linked to domestic objections from a part of the political spectrum, which estimates that through this agreement, Kosovo has lost over 8 thousand hectares of land.

The eventual failure of the ratification of the Agreement by the Kosovo Assembly is believed to create major political consequences for Kosovo, whether in the failure of the agreement with Montenegro or even with the loss of the case for visa liberalisation, because ratification remains the European Union's condition for opening the perspective for Kosovo citizens for free, visa free movement.