Analysts: With the lack of will from Belgrade and Pristina, Brussels also showed its impotence to achieve agreements

In addition to the lack of political will on the part of Kosovo and Serbia to implement the agreement reached in the dialogue, analysts believe that Brussels has also proved unable to push forward the level of achievement agreed upon in the Brussels-Ohrid Agreement.

In the absence of progress in the dialogue, experts do not rule out tensions, referring to the Serbs’ warning to boycott the elections in the north of Kosovo.

The Executive Director of the Institute for Social Policy “Musine Kokalari” Beljzim Kamberi in a statement for koha.net assesses that there are two main reasons for the lack of progress in the dialogue.

“The main thing is the lack of political will of Kosovo and Serbia to implement the agreement they agreed to, and on the other hand, the lack of political power of the EU itself and the mediators to realize and implement the agreement they outlined. These two elements led to the failure of the implementation of this agreement, which is already a hostage to many current structures in Pristina and Belgrade, as well as the structures of the EU and the USA,” he believes.

In his opinion, we should probably wait until the elections are held in the EU and the USA, maybe even in Kosovo, to see if there is a possibility to implement the agreement.

Political analyst Visar Zani states that not only Kosovo and Serbia are to blame for the non-implementation of the Ohrid Agreement, but also the EU envoy for dialogue Miroslav Lajčak and the EU itself.

“They are, in a way, ‘facilitators’ of this process, and then also guarantors of the implementation of obligations.” In the future, the parties must face fair pressure with the aim of being forced to fulfill all obligations without tolerating any party,” said Zani.

He assessed that not only Kosovo should be under pressure and sanctions, while “the language towards Serbia is soft”, because, according to him, there is a “blatant violation of the Brussels Agreement and the Ohrid annex” on the Serbian side.

As an argument for that claim, he mentioned the formation of a Serbian team for lobbying against Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe, “which violates both the agreement and the appeal”.

“In this way, if this continues, we will not have the implementation of the agreement even in 2024 or 2025, because the parties only assume obligations, but do not implement them,” said Zani.