Kosovo, Serbia away from normalising relations

Six years after reaching the First Agreement on the Normalisation of Kosovo-Serbia Relations, the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) estimates the lack of full implementation of this agreement has failed to meet citizens' expectations. This agreement, mediated by the European Union and signed by then Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, and Serbia's Ivica Dacic, was ratified at the Kosovo Assembly on 27 June 2013 as an international agreement. This is the first and only agreement ratified under the process of normalising relations with Serbia. The same has not been ratified by Serbia's Assembly. Serbia's Constitutional Court has even named the Brussels Agreement political and non-legal issues, so it had refused to examine its constitutionality.

The “Historical agreement” was an EU attempt to resolve problems between the two states, while its 15 points were aimed at regulating issues that are related to the Association/United States with the Serbian Majority, integration of security and justice structures, organising local elections in the four northern municipalities of Kosovo, energy, telecommunication and relevant European roads.

The problems which have accompanied implementation of the Agreement on Normalisation of Relations, according to KDI, but also most of the following agreements are:

1. The constructive ambition of the agreements contains durability that creates space for different interpretations on specific aspects of the prior obligations between the parties. In the absence of an objective interpretation of the agreement on the part of the EU, the parties have used the scope of unilateral interpretation of the agreement, choosing the manner of (not) its implementation;

2. The lack of guarantor mechanisms and supervisors the EU's focus has been oriented to facilitate reaching agreements between the parties, but not ensuring their implementation. This has also been reflected in the European Commission's Strategy for Enlargement in 2018, where the need for reaching agreements is addressed, without even pointing to the implementation of agreements reached so far. As a part of the dialogue facilitator, the EU has failed to force the parties to implement the agreements in the set deadlines. As a result, implementation of the agreements has remained in the discretion of Kosovo and Serbia, which in the absence of binding mechanisms, have postponed implementation of agreements or have not implemented them at all. As a result of delays in their implementation, certain parts of the agreements have also been renegotiated;

3. Lack of political will as a significant political process, the lack of political will that accompanied the dialogue process could be assessed at two levels: at the internal level and at that bilatheral level. At the domestic level, political and social developments within the two states affected the low level of implementation of agreements. At the bilatheral level between the two states, the political implications which result from implementing the agreement, which were beyond technical terms, influenced the parties, especially Serbia, to hesitate to implement the agreements;

4. The lack of transparency has accompanied the process of dialogue since its beginning. This has contributed to lowering civic credibility to the process, but also to the inability of institutional co-ordination and political support regarding different topics that have been discussed;

Consider the above-mentioned problems, but also current developments that connect to the closing phase of Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) offers recommendations as follows:

1. The final agreement should not be written in the spirit of ambition ? So it should clearly determine the preservation of Kosovo's citizenship, including issues related to territorial integrity, the unitary constitutional functioning of Kosovo, as well as Kosovo's international representation;

2. The broad political consensus ʹ State Delegation, established to represent Kosovo in the final phase of dialogue, has not found wide support among the political spectrum. Reaching broad political consensus around this stage is key before reaching an eventual agreement;

3. Kosovo institutions, including the negotiating group, have to ensure transparency of the process, keeping the Parliament, civil society and citizens informed of all developments that concern the dialogue process;

4. Guarantees for implementing the European Union and the US agreements must have a guarantor role in the eventual agreement between the parties;

5. The deadlines for implementation of the eventual agreement should have strict deadlines of implementation, as well as punitive measures for non-compliance parties;

6. The agreement should be registered to the UN Secretariat ʹ to the potential agreement, in addition to being ratified by the two countries' parliaments, it should also be registered to the UN Secretariat (UNTC) as an international agreement, while avoiding the different interpretations of the parties on its nature.