New government takes European agenda priority

On the integration path to the European Union (BE), Kosovo compared to other Western Balkan countries is the last, as it has not yet applied for candidate status.

The lack of political will has left the country mired in meeting conditions stemming from agreements with the EU, Demush Shaha, from the EKPIK Institute, told Online Economy.

The former secretary of the European Integration Ministry says institutions have not noted progress in implementing obligations made by the EU.

Kosovo's European perspective in this direction has had a deadlock in recent years on two aspects, the first aspect is the lack of political will of our Government institutions to undertake reforms on our integration path, and when we say so, can testify by looking at at at at at at least two key documents of the National Programme for Enforcement of the MSA and the European Reforms Agency”.

“in these two documents, according to institutions themselves, only 2/3 have been implemented that has not been implemented at all, while the reform agenda only 5 out of 22 priorities were fulfilled. The main reason is the lack of political will to advance in areas like rule of law, reform in public administration and other sectors”.

In this respect he says he has also influenced the EU's internal problems.

“If we analyse these two main obstacles on our way to undertake European reforms, we can conclude the lack of political will is the main obstacle. Now the second aspect is those of the EU's internal problems, where it is going through an evolutionary process where some countries have different views on how enlargement should go before”.

While Butrint Berisha, a researcher at the Pristina Institute for Policy Studies, says that based on their findings, 62% of ERA's obligations have been fulfilled.

According to him, institutions contracting agreements with the EU such as the SAA and the ERA have implemented them at a slow pace.

The ERA Agreement is a document that has emerged from the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, and there are in total 29 measures ahead of it to implement by the Government of Kosovo. In our last research a few months ago, we found that some 62% of the ERA's obligations were fully implemented. On the other hand, there is a percentage of other obligations that have been partially implemented”.

“As a whole, it can be said that the pace of implementation of obligations stemming from contracting agreements with the EU such as the SAA and ERA from the Government of Kosovo are at a slower pace or could have a higher pace of their implementation. The past government has been known to have a slow co-operation rate in this regard”.

He says the new government should seriously address and put the agenda of European reforms to priority.