Back to Pristina for dialogue with Serbia

The need for the political spectrum in Kosovo to resume with the process, from the internal consensus to the definition of representation and supervision of dialogue, according to them, arises even as a result of the Constitutional Court's act of bias, which declared the Law unconstitutional for the Kosovo delegation for talks with Serbia, while rejecting the platform that was then adopted in the Parliament.

Naim Rashit, director of the Balkan Policy Group in Kosovo, tells Radio Free Europe, that the dialogue process with Serbia and its closure should be the competence of the Government of Kosovo.

He says the Constitutional Court's act must be a stronger awareness of the Government's agenda of talks with Serbia.

The “ [The Constitutional Court's decision] has now brought about a new situation and the more trust now loses in the process, makes the search for the government's consensus and the opposition in the process even more difficult, Rashi said.

He says the negotiating team, now disbanded, did not have a two-thirds support of the Kosovo Assembly, and that the second problem with the team was co-ordination between a deputy prime minister and a representative of the opposition and the competencies they had.

One of the former co-chairmen of the already disbanded negotiating team was Shpend Ahmeti, chairman of the Social Democrat Party and head of Pristina. He says it makes no sense that such an important issue as dialogue with Serbia will lead only one person, whether the president or prime minister.

We have insisted that the decision-making return to the Parliament, unfortunately that some other subjects have decided or thought it was not, and now we're still in a vacuum in terms of how Kosovo will be represented, so to have representation involving all political subjects”, Ahmeti has declared.

On the other hand, political analyst Imer Mushkolaj told Radio Free Europe that for talks with Serbia, there should not be a negotiating team and should not, according to him, even now have such groups. He considers political dialogue with Serbia should lead the Government and the prime minister of Kosovo.

Kosovo has its own institutions and relevant institutions, as the Constitutional Court has assessed and they must assume responsibility. Any other attempt to put the dialogue on a body, whether a broad or similar negotiating team, is just a deviation from dialogue and should not happen”, he said.

On the other hand, Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, one who had supported the formation of the negotiating team and the drafting of the relevant law, continues to believe even further that the issue of dialogue with Serbia is not only the competence of the Government, but also of other mechanisms.

“The question of dialogue is a larger and temporary project in this case, but it is national and out of the ordinary responsibilities of a government. It's logical, although there are institutions, to form ad-hok bodies, ad-hoc mechanisms for such a big national issue. In other countries also on such topics, such mechanisms --” -- have been expressed.

At the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI), they say Kosovo's Assembly should keep the accounting government in terms of the dialogue process, having a pro-active and more efficient monitoring role.

Life Krasniqi from KDI says parliamentary commissions and Parliamentary deputies should exploit all the monitoring mechanisms available, including calls for reporting, interventions, field visits and other visits, to ensure the prosperity of the process and to ensure the implementation of agreements, including accounting research.

In December 2018, Kosovo's Assembly had approved the Kosovo negotiating team, led by Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Limaj and Social Democrat Party Chairman Shpend Ahmeti. This team was meant to operate on the basis of the Law for the competencies and responsibilities of the Kosovo delegation in talks with Serbia.

This team and the related law were not supported by the two largest opposition parties, the Democratic League of Kosovo and the Vetevendosje Movement, which were addressed at the request for a review of the Law's constitutionality for the Kosovo delegation's duties and responsibilities.

The Constitutional Court has decided in favour of the subject put forward by the two opposition parties -- the LDK and Vetevendosje -- which was deemed unconstitutional to the Law for the Kosovo delegation in talks with Serbia and therefore the negotiating team, which functioned on the basis of that law.

Currently, the process of talks between Kosovo and Serbia, mediated by the European Union, is interrupted. Until the eventual start of the talks, Kosovo's position and platform in the process remains indisputable.