Reuten: After visa, EU's next step in granting candidate status to Kosovo

MP from the Alliance for Progress of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament (PE), Thijs Reuten, believes the European Union's next step in reporting with Kosovo after visa liberalisation will be the process of Kosovo's Union membership application.

After the totally unnecessary delays since today, visa-free travel to the EU has entered into force for all Kosovo citizens. Next step: Processing Kosovo's application for candidate status in Europe” has written Reuta on the social platform, X.

With the end of 2023, Spain concluded the chairmanship of the European Union, thus handing over its mandate to Belgium for six months.

On 15 December last year, Kosovo officially submitted the necessary documents for application for Union membership.

From that time until today, Kosovo's documentation was not reviewed, why when Sweden's EU chairmanship had it, there was an effort for the EU Council to review Kosovo's application for EU membership and eventually to give the European Commission mandate to compile thoughts about this application.

But neither did Sweden manage to secure the support of all member states for this, while Spain was among the countries that mostly opposed it.

Now when Belgium takes the next chairmanship, it is not clear whether it will return to the Kosovo application for EU membership, delivered at the end of 2022, when the chairmanship had Cekia.

This is also a legal issue, since Kosovo's independence has not recognised all member states and enlargement is decided by consensus. But, there is also political issue, as it also relates to Kosovo's behaviour in the dialogue process with Serbia and implementation of the obligations stemming from this process”, an EU diplomat has told Radio Free Europe.