Ambassador Rohde: The government did not listen to our advice

Germany wants Kosovo inside ( KiE, but we have to make sure that countries have doubts, that this majority of 2/3 is achieved, and without reliable steps in that direction again we're not talking about implementing association, but about the first steps, and that hasn't happened. And as it says in the letters of the two heads of government, the ball has started in Kosovo and it is still here, and as the ball spins in the direction we want, the road is open to membership and this can happen very quickly”.

So said German Ambassador to Kosovo Jorn Rohde, in an interview for Info Magazine in Kosovo Clan.

“Yes. Depends on when the ball goes down in the right direction. It may be because there may be extraordinary sessions in the Council of Ministers at the KiE, but we should see relevant movements by the government”, Rohde stressed.

On the other hand, he said the Kosovo rapporteur's report to the KiE, Dora Bakoyannis, does not mention conditions, but recommendations.

“officially they are not called conditions, but recommendations. I have to point again: The KiE's AP has voted absolute majority to recommend Kosovo for membership, but the decision belongs to the government, and it must decide. And eventually you have to convince the government. And as you know, we are major allies of Kosovo. We have said that 2/3 of the majority is secure if you take the specific steps that we have advised Kosovo to undertake, and that has not yet happened. I refer to the words I said earlier: the ball is in Kosovo's field”, the German diplomat accredited in Kosovo.

Stopping with reports between the Government of Kosovo and Germany, Rohde said that “relations are not built in a single case”.

In politics, as in the family, you sometimes have different opinions, you have to manage differences. We have 27 member states in the EU, and we should say that Germany has some hot themes with our neighbour France, but we manage consent and compromise. The EU is sometimes a very boring process, we're a complex car, but that's what brings us forward, because everybody needs, in principle, to look into the mirror and say: how we can achieve a common denominator, and our wish, is not just Germany, we want Kosovo to be there. And we can only give advice, it is Kosovo's sovereign decision to continue. But I think that would be my final statement about it: if he had followed our advice last year when you submitted Kosovo's application to the AP, because there was a board and there was a lot of push because of Kosovo, and he succeeded. This time around, the government has not listened to our suggestions”, German Ambassador to Kosovo Jorn Rohde stressed.