How did Kurti defend the European draft state for association that refused to take him to the CoE Court for Accession

Kosovo failed to join the Council of Europe last week.

The “in these last weeks faced a new condition that has nothing to do with membership standards in this organisation”, the prime minister said two weeks ago at a government meeting, warning in some way the frustration that would come in the following week. “We heard there are capitals, which are now conditioning the finalisation of the membership process with the sending of a document to the Kosovo Constitutional Court”, Albin Kurti said at that meeting. Word was about the European Union's draft state of the Serb majority municipalities, which Brussels emissary Miroslav Lajcak and representatives of Germany and France had brought to Pristina on 21 October last year.

The draft status that the EU describes as a modern and European model for the issue of addressing minority rights, the Government refused to submit for consideration to the Constitutional. Kurti said he's a “a non-document, that's a papernon paper”.

Kosovo's “government cannot submit documents which it has not accepted and are not formal to the Constitutional Court. This request to us has been and remains absurd”, the prime minister said.

To justify the rejection of the condition, Kurti showed “capital returns” that he said he had for the EU draft state of association.

“Allow me to repeat that the Government did not accept the draft proposed by emissary Lajcak, because he was refused on October 26, 2023, and two days before that I delivered my capital remarks on that draft, so on October 24th”, Kurti said.

On October 26, 2023, Kurti had gone to Brussels after reading in Pristina a new plan for dialogue, which five diplomats from Europe and America, including EU envoy for dialogue Miroslav Lajcak and US envoy for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar, brought to him on September 21st. There, ahead of Germany's cacellari, Olaf Scholz, France's president, Emmanuel Macron and Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Melon, was ready to sign for the founding of this municipality under the European draft.

“After more than a decade of insistence on Asociation, in Zajednica, Serbia has earlier refused to sign a draft of self-defense brought by the European Union and the United States of America”, Kurti said at a conference for the media the next day, with his return to Pristina, where he denounced Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq for bringing destructives the day before.

Kurti said that meeting pointed to the “importance that the European Union and European Union leaders cost normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia”.

Kosovo's “Republic highly appreciates the commitment of the European Union, the United States of America, their leaders, their emissaries, and we thank them for their role and contribution”, he said.

Through Vuciqi's refusal to sign, Kurti praised the content of the EU draft status summit.

You know, in the past, they were commended for signing my predecessors, and now they don't want it, just because of content, because of the meaning of these texts of these” agreements, Kurti declared.

The EU report highly praised him, though in fact it was not quite certain that the draft status quo would conflict with the Constitution, except that it said everything would be submitted to the Constitutional Court's assessment.

The “Draft for self-enamination, which they have brought, is carefully written against the letter and the Constitution and the laws of Kosovo, and that if it was signed, it was envisioned to control the Constitutional Court immediately, namely, that the Constitutional Court provides assessment of the constitutionality of this proposal in response to”, Kurti stressed.

Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi said at that conference that “sponsors of this document have stated, have assured that during the drafting of their proposal, which is not a proposal take or leave it, they have taken care to the maximum of meeting Mr. Kurti's terms for the full observance of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo and the December Constitutional Court's decision of 2015”.

European mediator Miroslav Lajcak stated that Albin Kurti and Aleksandar Vuciq had expressed themselves ready to implement the agreement on the road to normalisation of relations. He said they both had comments and questions on the European proposal for the establishment of the Association of Serb majority municipalities, which would be clarified <x0).

At the request of the opposition parties, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, on November 3rd of last year, was due to report ahead of the draft draft status framework for the establishment of the Association of Serb majority municipalities, which he defended and commended there as well.

The first “, the draft in my political assessment, breaks off the non-recognition of the Republic of Kosovo that was drawn up in the 2013 and 2015 agreements. So, in my political judgment, the draft has a clarity as far as recognition of the Republic of Kosovo, as an independent state in which Serbs will live in accordance with the multiethnic aspirations of the Constitution and with no other damaging intent for the Republic in recognition of the sovereign state and our territorial integrity”, Kurti declared.

This clarity, Kurti said it doesn't represent “Zieednica”, because “would thus be undisputed”.

However, the government's chief said the draft state had not yet officially accepted. “To accept means to make the commitment to implement the draft”, he expressed, adding that he has offered to sign it and “therefore to accept”.

“Draft in my political assessment makes it clear that the mechanism that will be established will have co-ordinating and co-operative characters. So, it will neither prejudge nor interfere with the competencies of central organs and so on”, Kurti declared, responding to opposition criticism in the Parliament.

For the draft state that currently considers unacceptable, Kurti said in the country that “shuts down the space used by Serbia for Serbs in Kosovo to design a future outside Kosovo's borders or in ignorance of the borders of Kosovo”.

So the draft makes it clear that the country is the Republic of Kosovo and the future is co-existence in institutions and the borders of the Republic of Kosovo. This suggests that Serbia would have to give up the promise that Serbs in Kosovo live in Serbia or that Serbs in Kosovo might have territorial secessional aspirations or autonomy outside the Republic of Kosovo outside the laws and constitution of Kosovo”, he declared.

Kurti mentioned that, according to that draft, for any change in the Association statute, it would take place once it is accepted by the Kosovo Ministry of Management of Local Power after the Constitutional Court has rendered a legal act.

This reverses what the 2013 and 2015 agreements built, respectively, the assumption that participants in an association would be free to advance it in an unknown direction. Such an unknown direction no longer exists, and the direction is now clear and recognised, and it is the Constitution and the laws of the Republic of Kosovo, breakthroughs, overcoming advances are not allowed and” cannot happen, the chief of executives stated.

In its discussion with opposition deputies, Kurti said the European draft is “better incomparable” than the 2013 and 2015 agreements.

Contrary to that, which is even better, by October 24th, I have sent my criticism and my remarks to European emissary Lajcak, two days before the meeting in Brussels”, he declared.

The refusal to submit this draft status to the Constitutional Court is now keeping Kosovo out of the Council of Europe. Prime Minister Albin Kurti hoped that a <x0-letter of the guarantee” that the association would be established after membership, and then a recent effort with another letter sent to Strasbourg that a new draft state would be sent to the tribunal by the end of the month would cause Kosovo to enter the KiE. But none of these steps avoided failure, and the case was left out of the agenda of the Committee of Ministers meeting last week.

Now, when it is confirmed that an important movement towards establishment of association is inevitable for membership in the KiE, the Government is willing to write a draft status in the hope that by the end of the year it will be admitted to the oldest international political organisation in Europe. /express