“As long as they receive salaries from Belgrade, integration is difficult”

The deputy chairman of the Leposaviqi municipality, Marina Bogojevic, has said it is working on implementing projects for the municipality and surrounding villages, but it stresses the full integration of Serbs as they continue to receive pension salaries from Serbia.

“Presence through Serbian parallel institutions is harmful, dividing people, some on one side who have been enormously enriched and on the other, the percentage of people who have lived near existence. I see that now with the arrival of the new municipal institutions, we have realized there was a number of people who barely survived. Any mix of parallel institutions of Serbian authorities here will be harmful to this people”, she has declared.

Asked whether they are ready as citizens of the north to contribute to an eventual draft of association, she sees this as impossible, because, as she says, the lack of intellectual political layer in the north.

Leposaviqi's current deputy chairman says Serbian residents only need legislative framework through association. She further points out that the interventions of parallel structures so far have caused great confusion in the people.

“As for the Association, for me and the Serbian citizens living here, the only possibility of the solution is direct co-ordination with Pristina, solutions to be made by Pristina, because we no longer look back, and in two heads. We just see the real situation right now on the ground. Our real situation is to deal with ourselves through youth employment, as we are doing through the municipality, we have new open competitions. Thus, youth on the entire territory of the north has not gone because of Kosovo's policy, but because of Serbia's” policy, she has said.

According to Leposaviqi's deputy chairman for residents of the Serb community in northern Mitrovica, only one solution is needed; employment and life are best in the spaces in which they live.