Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe is not included in the agenda of the Committee of Ministers of this organization, which will meet this week.

This is what the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora of Kosovo, Kreshnik Ahmeti, said through a post on Facebook.

Ahmeti said that despite the support enjoyed by Kosovo for membership in the Council of Europe – the leading organization in the field of human rights – there are several countries that ask Kosovo to accept “the draft statute of [European Union envoy for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue] Miroslav Lajcak for the establishment of the Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority and send it to the Constitutional Court, in a way that is acceptable to the Court”.

“It is likely that this vote will be postponed. The eventual postponement comes as a result of the confusion of two independent processes, in which case the Council of Europe is being used as a lever of pressure on Kosovo to accept Lajcak’s draft statute and send it to the Constituent Assembly, also inconsistent with the process of dialogue in Brussels”, Ahmeti said among other things.

According to him, the request for the Association has nothing to do with the values ​​and principles of the Council of Europe and the European Charter for Local Self-Government.

“The eventual postponement will limit the opportunities of citizens, including the Serbian minority, to use the mechanisms of the Council of Europe, including the Strasbourg Court, to address their rights. Moreover, the postponement will send a very disturbing signal to the countries of the region”, Ahmeti assessed.

On April 16, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe supported the report recommending Kosovo’s membership in this organization based in Strasbourg.

The author of the report, Dora Bakoyannis, said that Kosovo has fulfilled all the conditions for membership and considered the issue of the formation of the Association as an internal topic of Kosovo.

However, information has been circulating for days that some Western countries are demanding that Kosovo make progress towards the formation of the Association, in order to be accepted into this organization.

The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, said a few days ago that his Government will not accept the establishment of the Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority as a condition for Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe.

“The government does not accept the conditionality of membership in the CoE with the Association. For the normalization of relations with Serbia, we talk in Brussels, not in Strasbourg”, said Kurti.

Kosovo and Serbia have reached agreement on the Association in 2013 and then in 2015 on the principles for its establishment.

In 2015, the Constitutional Court of Kosovo found that the agreement is not in full harmony with the Constitution.

Serbia demands that Kosovo implement the agreements reached, but the Government of Kosovo has declared against a mono-ethnic association.