EU confirms Lajcak meeting with Kurti, Vuciqi

European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security spokesman Peter Stano has confirmed that the European bloc's special envoy for dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, Miroslav Lajcak, will be in Berlin on 4 May, where he will meet with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, and with Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq.

The warnings are that Lajcak will also have a joint meeting with the two leaders.

If taken, this will be the first meeting between Kurt and Vuciqi since July last year.

Kurti's Berlin trip and Vuciqi has been warned since last week, at the invitation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The German translator, Olaf Scholz, has invited President Vuciq and Prime Minister Kurti to special bilateral visits to Berlin on 4 May. At the invitation of Chancellor Scholz, and special envoy Miroslav Lajcak will be in Berlin on 4 May to meet first with the Chancellor, and then even at an informal meeting with President Vuciq and Prime Minister Kurti”, the EU spokesman has said.

In the EU, there have been several attempts to create conditions for a high-level meeting between Kurti and Vuciqi, within the dialogue on normalising relations, but so far without success.

EU top diplomat Josep Borrell himself has said he will not invite leaders to such a face-to-face meeting, without clear indicators that concrete progress will be achieved at the meeting.

This informal meeting in Berlin, if realised, could be an opportunity to improve the atmosphere within dialogue and make any high-level meetings in Brussels possible.

The first meetings that have been held between Kurti and Vuciqi in Brussels, an EU official has named them “light, not pleasant, and not decomposing of”.

This official has said those meetings were more <x0monologists of these leaders” than real dialogue.

Lajcak has warned that on May 13th he will wait at a upcoming meeting of Kosovo and Serbia's top negotiators, Besnik Bislimi and Petar Petkovic, within dialogue on technical issues.

It is expected at this meeting to continue discussions on the car license issue, which the parties have not agreed on at the last meeting in Brussels.

The interim agreement on license plates envisions the sticky cover of state symbols on Kosovo and Serbia's car plates when they cross each other's territory.

This agreement, reached on September 30th last year in Brussels, has emerged after several days of unrest in northern Kosovo, where some local Serbs have blocked roads to reject the Kosovo government's then ruling on reciprocity measures against Serbia.

With those measures -- Serbia's license plates -- once it enters Kosovo territory -- has had to set temporary license plates like Kosovo license drivers did when they entered Serbia.