Kosovo and Serbia found common ground on the license plates disputes, but a final agreement has not been reached, yet.

It was Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi who announced the development following a meeting with Serbian representatives in Brussels. He added that it is up to Belgrade to give the green light.

In principle, the agreement has three main elements:  

• From Monday, Kosovo and Serbia start using stickers instead of provisional license plates (temporary solution)
• Establishment of a working group tasked to find a permanent solution for free movement within 6 months
• Easing tensions, removing barricades near Jarinje and Bernjak border points

“Of course, we would prefer not to have any barriers at all, so that both countries recognize the plates of other countries. But this will be the objective of a working group that we’ll establish soon and start working from October 21. We agreed on all points”, he said.

Bislimi explained that the Serbian side had asked not to cover the license plates of Kosovo’s Serbs with the acronym KM, which stands for Kosovo’s Mitrovica. But these plates are deemed illegal by Prishtina.

‘We cannot accept an agreement where the illegal owners of the license plates are being favored’, stressed Bislimi.

Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent state, as a result, it doesn’t recognize the acronym RKS (Republic of Kosovo) on its official plates. In 2011, Prishtina and Belgrade agreed that vehicles from Kosovo would place temporary license plates when crossing to Serbia, while Kosovo saw to hide Serbian plates with a sticker.

After being revised in 2016, the agreement was supposed to terminate this September 15. After this date, the government of Kosovo applied reciprocity, which meant that vehicles with Serbian plates would have to place temporary plates when entering Kosovo.