Hahn: Transaction of territories could be like a small part of Kosovo agreement

Commissioner for European Culture Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn was in Washington last week to discuss the Middle East, Ukraine and the Western Balkans with his US counterparts.

In this context, as it writes The Washington Post, conveys Telegrafi, he has also spoken about the agreement between Greece and what is now called Northern Macedonia, saying that together, the US and the EU were shown successful.

According to him, in the wars of the 1990s and their aftermath, Washington was in “the driver's location” in the region, not Brussels. Today, Hahn said, the opposite is true. The United States is very supportive of the European Union in and in the region, he said, adding, “I think they are very happy that we are today at the top of the” region.

And Hahn's hope is that resolving Macedonia's name dispute will serve as a forerunner to solutions to other conflicts, including dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia.

Speaking about a possible agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, however, about the possibility of “correction of borders” respectively, Hahn stressed that a legally binding agreement between two would cover areas beyond borders and that “a fundamental element in a future agreement should be observing minority rights”.

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The only precondition we have established is that any kind of bilateral agreement should contribute to more peace and stability in the region”.

However, a political agreement that comes at the cost of others, Hahn said, would be unacceptable to the European Union.