The European Union’s envoy for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Miroslav Lajčák, will meet on Tuesday morning in Pristina with Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi, the Kosovar government announced on Monday.
Bislimi, who is also Kosovo’s chief negotiator in the EU-mediated talks, will discuss with Lajčák “the way forward with the implementation of the Basic Agreement”, according to the statement.
With the EU’s mediation, Kosovo and Serbia reached the Agreement on the normalization of relations on February 27, 2023.
The normalization agreement, consisting of 11 points, provides for a level of self-governance for the Serbian community in Kosovo and mutual recognition of state symbols, while requiring Pristina and Belgrade to implement all previous agreements reached during the dialogue.
The EU has said that the agreement, although not signed, is binding for the parties, and has yet to begin to be implemented.
The international community strongly urges Kosovo to establish the Association of Serb-majority municipalities, but the Kosovo government has expressed concern that such an ethnically-based association could undermine the functionality of the state of Kosovo.
The Prime Minister’s Office has no further details about the visit of the EU envoy, or whether he will have meetings with other Kosovar officials.
Lajčák is visiting Kosovo a week after, at his invitation, representatives of Kosovo and Serbia met on February 27 in Brussels to discuss the issue of a regulation of the Central Bank of Kosovo (CBK), which banned the use of the Serbian dinar throughout the country starting from February 1.
However, Bislimi had refused his invitation to attend that meeting with the reasoning that it was not a meeting he should attend because, as he said, the “dinar issue is not part of the dialogue” for the normalization of Kosovo-Serbia relations.
The Kosovo delegation was led by the Governor of the CBK, Ahmet Ismaili, while Lajčák announced additional meetings on this issue in the future.
The CBK regulation, which came into force on February 1, stipulates the euro as the only currency that can be used for cash payments in Kosovo.
Western diplomats urged the Kosovo government to suspend its implementation to give time to citizens affected by it to adjust to the new practice because since after the war in 1999, the Serbian community in Kosovo accepts payments in dinars from Serbia, including wages, pensions, and child benefits.
However, Prime Minister Albin Kurti insisted that the CBK’s decision cannot be revoked.
