Abbott for ECC regulation: Kosovo taking unilateral action

The ambassador of Great Britain to Kosovo, Nicholas Abbott, has spoken of the Kosovo Central Bank regulation, which prohibits the use of the Serbian dinar and other payment exchanges in the country.

Abbott said the state he represents respects the integrity of the Kosovo Central Bank and the right of this institution to issue new regulations, but said they have problems with the manner of implementing this regulation.

Kosovo's <x0.> Central Bank is an independent institution, we fully respect this, we respect its integrity, and we fully respect the fact that the Central Bank presents regulations to bring greater transparency into the financial system, to fight money laundering and counterfeiting, we have all checked 2 euros recently, the issue has nothing to do with it, the issue has to do with implementing the regulation, and the way this happened, very quickly, and of course this affects a part of the population in Kosovo, we are very focused on how this affects the payments that come from individuals from Serbia, but also the institutions for social payment, or health, or the way that happened in Kosovo, Abkson, Abka.

Abbott said that not enough clarifications have been given to this regulation for those affected, until he added that the regulation has nothing to do with proving sovereignty, but with good governance.

This is not about sovereignty, it's about good governance, it's about how you treat communities in Kosovo. To make changes that the regulation needs people to understand what they can do, what they can do, they need to understand whether they haven't been paid in euros as they can get them, they need to understand when their money will be available, this is a big question that has to do with the education and education system that has been dependent on payments from Serbia, no one has challenged this as a matter, the government of Kosovo doesn't propose to intervene and pay for these institutions, still expects Serbia to carry out these payments, Abbott said.

The British ambassador added that the BEC regulation is the unilateral act of Kosovo and as such is harmful. He added that the issues this regulation addresses would be good to manage through the process of dialogue for normalisation.

This regulation has some impact on some issues, issues that we and others would prefer to see managed through the normalisation process, but we're also concerned that unilateral actions affect a particular element of communities within Kosovo are really harmful if they're not prepared, so it's about a transitional period, and I'm not talking about years, I'm talking about months. If such issues were done in Britain automatically become an assessment of the impact, it would immediately be considered what effect it would have on communities, considering how people are affected by that decision. I'm afraid this hasn't happened here, so we're looking for a much longer transitary period” said Abbott.