What the EU has in store for austerity measures

Demush Shasha of the Kosovo Institute for European Policy, expresses the opinion that the measures the EU has imposed on Kosovo are soft and are not of irreparable consequences.

However, according to him, although the EU has the opportunity to tighten these measures, the decision on such a thing requires consensus of all member states, which is hard to achieve.

So far, as he says, the EU has cancelled meetings of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (MSA), which has a marginal effect.

However, according to him, if a consensus on hardening the measures is reached, then the EU can make political and legal decisions that suspend the implementation of certain parts of the SAA.

For example, the EU may make a decision to have the entire MSA trade part suspended. This means that Kosovo exporters are denied all the privileges they currently enjoy during their EU export”, Shasha points out.

Also, according to him, the EU is likely to toughen Kosovo's amount of non-alterial arrangement at high-level meetings and the suspension of bilateral visits.

Despite the current move, according to him, Kosovo's top institutional leaders have participated so far in several high-level meetings, but that could change.

For example, the EU can issue the decision as of September 1st, Kosovo institutions are denied participation in all European forums. I'm talking about escalation. This could go on escalation, to the levels where we enter the range of sanctions”, Shasha points out.

He adds that, to date, EU measures in the financial field have been soft and have not produced irreversible consequences.

According to him, the EU has suspended the funds earmarked for Kosovo, but has not cancelled them.

The EU can now scale this, and from suspension of funds it could go to a fund abort. Then, the consequences are irreversible”, Shasha points out.

In this context, according to him, losses for Kosovo could range from thousands of euros to hundreds of millions of euros, depending on what message the EU wants to send to Kosovo authorities.

However, he does not believe the EU will take extreme measures, but they will be proportional in relation to bringing Kosovo authorities.

The option element to scale these measures is endless”, Shasha says.

However, according to him, the eventual tightening of measures is unlikely to occur for a short while and easily, because this could cause irreparable consequences in Kosovo reports - The EU.

He considers that the EU will also be behaving depending on the situation on the ground.

“If the EU, specifically, says "don't open the bridge (on Iber) and if Kosovo institutions open it, but during this process there is no consequences on the ground so there won't be any unrest then I don't see that the EU will take steps”, Shasha points out, adding that, in contrast, the EU will react to the created situation.

However, Shasha expresses confidence that the EU will not take serious measures towards Kosovo.

He considers that even in the past, when there were serious riots in the north of the country, which resulted in injured KFOR soldiers, EU-set measures towards Kosovo were soft.

Last May 29th, Serb protests in northern Kosovo against the deployment of Albanian mayors in the four municipalities there culminated in clashes with KFOR members.

During the clashes, 93 KFOR members were injured, some of whom had serious injuries. / REL