Five failed meetings for the dinar in Brussels, sixth warning

The fifth meeting between the parties, which lasted more than seven hours, ended without any concrete results as another meeting was announced in the second week of May, the sixth in a row.

As the two chief negotiators have warned, Kosovo and Serbia will present their comments on the new proposal in the coming days, while the next meeting on the same issue will be held in mid-May.

Kosovo's chief negotiator, Besnik Bislimi, said EU mediator in the dialogue Miroslav Lajcak has come up with a new proposal for finding a solution to the payment issue.

“We have received our commitment that in a period of a week we will send our suggestions or concerns to the latest proposal”, Bislimi said, underlining that during the meeting Serbian officials have issued statements according to him concerning how they view the functioning of the Serb majority municipalities.

The Serb side's “position is that all of Serbia's illegal structures should continue to be financed, to continue to be financed until the time when the Association [of Serb majority municipalities] is established, because in their opinion, the purpose of the Association is not to ensure good co-ordination among municipalities, but to ensure the legitimacy of the presence of Serbian institutions in Kosovo, which would make them semi-Serb institutions, but not the institutions of Serbs in Kosovo”, Bislim said.

And Serbia's chief negotiator, Petar Petkovic, said the Pristina side does not want to negotiate, but wants to see things from its perspective only.

Meanwhile, the European Union's envoy for the talks, Miroslav Lajcak, said he has presented the parties with a compromise document in an effort to overcome differences.

“expected a meeting from Dialogue to find a solution for “the dinar issue”. This meeting gave the parties sufficient space to explain their positions”, he wrote.

Lajcak said that at the end of the meeting, he has proposed a document aimed at linking the sides' positions as far as the “dinar issue is concerned”.

“The meeting ended by presenting a compromise document in an effort to overcome differences. He will host the next meeting after accepting constructive comments”.

In contrast to previous meetings, European Union special envoy Miroslav Lajcak on Thursday did not initially hold separate meetings with Bisimi and Petkov, directly entering a trilateral meeting.

With Kosovo Central Bank's new regulation (BQK), the euro was designated as the only currency in Kosovo for conducting cash payments on February 1st.

The international community has urged Kosovo to suspend the regulation in order to give citizens time to adjust to the new practice.

But, the Kosovo government has insisted that it is about an independent BEC decision, not political decision.