Restarting dialogue with a hundred unknowns ( I)

Since Kosovo and Serbia have been negotiating, dialogue and talks, so in the past 22 years, a situation is not kept in mind, what is in effect now, when on one side we have a pledge of Pristina and official Belgrade to engage in a process of reaching agreement on normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and on the other side, we have a host of suspicious questions about the possibility that, in the near future, any balance between the two sides will be signed.

Twenty months of complete impasse in this dialogue -- the latest meeting at the level of Presidents Thaci and Vučić -- was held in November of 2018, in Brussels -- has made the news itself that Thursday, July 16th, in Brussels the first literal, direct, physical confrontation will take place between representatives of Pristina and Belgrade, seen as a success in itself.

Two such confrontations have been held in this virtual reality, the Paris Summit, June 10th, and in this Brussels dialogue, June 12th, but we know what kind of conversation really is.

This assessment, of the success of Brussels' meeting this Thursday, is really worth having to do with warring parties who, when making a decision to talk to each other, agree to recognize the legitimacy of the opponent on the front, and even to give signs that they are ready for a peaceful agreement.

Kosovo and Serbia are no longer at war (from the Kumanovo Technical Agreement, June 9, 1999), are not even in a genuine peace, and in its absence, this situation can also be defined as a kind of ceasefire, pending a final Accord.

Technically, that's how things are.

However, who now has no time or patience to deal with the political paradox that is strictly local production (Kosovo policy), the twenty-month deadlock of himself in this dialogue with a state which, looked at by that point above, is further in hostile reports with Kosovo, because confession of relations between Kosovo and Serbia is further unfinished, in the absence of a genuine political agreement on normalisation of reports between the two states.

Here, however, it can be said that Kosovo is continuing the dialogue these days (it has no longer been able to sustain such a paradoxical situation), not taking advantage of anything from this decision, while only a year ago, the American and German French proposals offered against multiple rewards to the country's highest authorities and Kosovo citizens, as if there were then obstacles to the recovery of dialogue.

The bills of these unprecedented errors of Kosovo's guidance have begun to come, but they have not yet been spent. There will still be bills like this.

However, all of us are now witnesses to a new European political and diplomatic momentum, which has gathered EU top diplomat Josep Borrell, his chief negotiator, Miroslav Lajčak, France's President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

There is no doubt that in Brussels, Berlin and Paris, there is a new will and momentum to help somehow the upper institutions of Pristina and Belgrade reach the end of a negotiator marathon that is lasting over 22 full years.

However, not even in these new circumstances, when the grand finale of these talks is warned (as this phase of talks has been baptized now of at least two years), the EU, Germany and France cannot come out clearly and publicly with their position on what the agreement should actually mean for the full normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

Macron, Merkel, Borrell, Lajčak, of course, unanimously finds, with a accuracy of a hundred percent, that the eventual agreement between Kosovo and Serbia would be a huge, extraordinary contribution to the long-term stabilisation of the Western Balkans.

Also, it is known that the formal appointment of this Accord between Kosovo and Serbia is the comprehensive agreement on normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia, or, even legally binding agreement.

Macron, Merkel, Borrell, Lajčak also have no qualms about what the relevant and desired content of this agreement would be between the Pristina and Belgrade authorities: It would best be if Serbia formally recognised Kosovo, at the limits set by the CSP (the sweeping proposal of Kosovo's status, President Ahtisaari's), in March 2007.

Here, even, as Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vučić, is publicly saying in recent days, there is no difference between the US and the EU, or America, Europe and Kosovo.

But, as it is seen, there is a real difference between the assessments and internal analyses in Brussels, Berlin and Paris for the desired epilogue of the conclusion chapter of these talks, and their public positions, which prefer the agreement between representatives of Kosovo and Serbia, to be somehow achieved with their authentic will, with the ease of Brussels, and with a political, diplomatic and financial support of Berlin and Paris and the entire European Union.

If there were such authentic will in Belgrade for Agreement with Pristina, this job would end forever, and it would not enter the third decenie of these talks.

That classical diplomatic approach of Bitsick and Carot (the bishop and carrot) seems to have been completely out of office in this predominantly dominated approach of Brussels, Berlin and Paris, both in front of Kosovo and Serbia, when it comes to dialogue in question.

Kosovo is not even being offered a earned right, according to EU game rules, for visa liberalisation (for known reasons for all and silent, also, almost everyone), as the SAA (Stable Agreement/ With this present dynamic of fulfillment, there will be no more than three years or more to live.

But the EU does not rush at all in this respect. Because even if Kosovo was to be zealous in its construction, there is nothing to offer next (the candidate state's status to integrate into the EU), without agreeing to the non-recognitional five, while Spain, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus can recognise Kosovo, only if it will, in one way or another (formally or de facto way), Serbia itself.

On the other hand, this will of the EU, Germany and France, to help and motivate Kosovo and Serbia to make this historic agreement, is incompatible with a chronic lack of a clear perspective on Serbia for the timeframe when it could become the future EU member state (likely, along with Montenegro), while in the case of Kosovo, EU membership is currently in the fantastic scientific arena.

There is no doubt that the EU has helped Kosovo and Serbia economically and financially.

In the case of Kosovo, The EU has remained the largest donor since 1999.

It never makes you forget.

But now we have come to a situation where the EU as a whole, separate from the largest and most influential states in the EU (after Great Britain's departure, can only talk about Germany and France), should be much clearer, more extreme, when defining their policy towards the Western Balkans in general, and towards Kosovo and Serbia in particular.

Without doing that, it will lack that principal reward and motivation for Serbia, so that it can sign an agreement with Kosovo.

Tomorrow: Currently, the US has no role in talks on reaching the Agreement on normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia.