Brussels – Less than a month and the Council of Europe could return to 47 members. Or 46 again, with one new membership and the second defection in three years. After a positive recommendation from the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy of the Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg, the plenary session will meet on April 18 to vote on inviting Kosovo to become a member of the Council of Europe. It is the last step before counting votes among the 46 member countries of the international human rights organization, which is continuing to exacerbate relations with Serbia (in violation of agreements made by Belgrade as part of the EU-facilitated Pristina-Belgrade dialogue). 
Following the go-ahead from the Committee of Ministers to Pristina’s application to become the 47th member of the Council of Europe (presented on May 12, 2022), the report signed by Greece’s Dora Bakoyannis welcomed “an extensive list of commitments made in writing by the Kosovo authorities.” stressing that accession “would lead to the strengthening of human rights standards by guaranteeing access to the European Court of Human Rights to all those under Kosovo’s jurisdiction”. Also, depending on the outcome of the April 18 vote, it will be up to the Committee of Ministers to make a final decision in May. The deterioration over the past year of the security situation in the north of the country was not unnoticed by the commission’s rationale: “The risk of open violence in Kosovo is all too real” since it depends on “protecting the rights of the Serb community, reducing tensions, and normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia.” That is why there appears in the report a call for a “post-accession commitment” for Pristina to establish the Association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo, to which should be granted autonomy on a whole range of administrative matters.
The report passed yesterday (March 27) with 31 votes in favour, four against (two representatives from Serbia, plus Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and one abstention (Greece), but still highlighted the “unprecedented circumstances” of the candidacy since several Council of Europe member states do not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state (including Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain among those in the EU), and called on the Committee of Ministers to ensure that accession “does not prejudice the positions of individual member states regarding Kosovo’s statehood.” However, this did not avoid triggering again the wrath of Belgrade, which called Strasbourg’s decision “shameful and scandalous” in the words of the interim Prime Minister, Ivica Dačić. Recently, the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, and the former Prime Minister and now President of Parliament, Ana Brnabić, have threatened that a Kosovo entry into the Council of Europe could imply a Serbian exit. A blackmail that, once more, violates point 4 of the Brussels Agreement of February 27, 2023, on the normalization of relations between the two countries: “Serbia will not oppose Kosovo’s membership in any international organization.”
In any case, the chances for Pristina’s membership in the international organization (which is not among the institutions of the European Union) have increased after the expulsion/exit of the Russian Federation, which came in the wake of the decision of the Committee of Ministers of March 16, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. Moscow is one of Serbia’s closest allies, particularly on the diplomatic dispute with independent Kosovo, and has also helped keep the issue of Pristina’s membership stalled at the Council of Europe. According to Article 4 of the Statute, “any European state which is deemed able and willing to fulfil the provisions of Article 3 [accepting the principles of the rule of law and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, ed.] may be invited to become a member of the Council of Europe by the Committee of Ministers.”
Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia
Only two months after the Ohrid understanding, the first event that opened one of the most difficult and violent years for relations between Serbia and Kosovo took place on May 26. As a result of the swearing-in of the newly elected mayors of Zubin Potok, Zvečan, Leposavić, and Kosovska Mitrovica, violent protests broke out and turned into guerrilla warfare on May 29 also involving soldiers from the international KFOR mission led by NATO. Tensions erupted over the Albin Kurti government’s decision to bring in special police forces to allow mayors elected on April 23 into municipalities in a controversial election round due to meagre voter turnout.
Clashes between Kosovo Serb protesters and NATO KFOR mission soldiers in Zvečan, May 29, 2023 (credits: Stringer / Afp)
Meanwhile, an arrest/kidnapping of three Kosovar police officers by Serbian security services was staged on June 14, for which the governments of Pristina and Belgrade accused each other of trespassing by their respective law enforcement agencies. Brussels convened an emergency meeting with PM Kurti and President Vučić to get out of “crisis management mode,” and it was not until June 22 that the three Kosovar policemen were released. However, due to Pristina’s failure to take a “constructive attitude” to de-escalate the tension, Brussels imposed “temporary and reversible” measures against Kosovo in late June (still in place, despite the roadmap agreed on July 12). However, the situation escalated with the terrorist attack on September 24 near the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Banjska. On the day of clashes between the Kosovo police and a group of about 30 gunmen, a policeman and three attackers were killed.
Developments in the attack showed clear ramifications in neighbouring Serbia. Among the bombers outside the monastery was also Milan Radoičić, deputy head of Lista Srpska (as confirmed by himself a few days after the armed attack), as well as Milorad Jevtić, a close associate of the Serbian president’s son, Danilo Vučić. To make matters worse, a Serbian “major military deployment” along the administrative border was denounced by the United States. The threat has not materialized, but the EU began to reflect on the ability to impose the same measures in force against Pristina also against Belgrade. But the green light needed unanimity in the council, and Vučić’s closest ally inside the Union, the Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán, vetoed. As if that were not enough, before early elections in Serbia on December 17, the last act of the government led by Ana Brnabić was to send a letter to Brussels to warn that Serbian institutions do not recognize the legal value of the verbal commitments made in the context of the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue and that the de facto sovereignty of Kosovo will not be recognized either.
(credits: Armen Nimani / Afp)
The only positive news at the moment is the resolution of the “battle of the license plates” between Serbia and Kosovo, thanks to the decision that came between late 2023 and early 2024 on mutual recognition for vehicles entering the border, given the unpromising assumptions on which the new year is being set. With the entry into force of the Regulation on Transparency and Stability of Financial Flows and Combating Money Laundering and Counterfeiting, as of February 1, the euro became the sole currency of exchange and deposit in bank accounts: the Serbian dinar can still be exchanged on par with the Albanian lek or the dollar, but the decision will impact all those public services that never adjusted to Pristina’s adoption of the euro in 2002 (even before independence).
On February 5, the special police operations at the offices of the temporary institutions run by Serbia
in four municipalities in northern Kosovo (Dragash, Pejë, Istog and
Klinë) and at the headquarters of the NGO Center for Peace and Tolerance
in Pristina raised controversy in Brussels: since 2008 Belgrade has continued to fund—illegally according to the Kosovo Constitution—municipalities,
companies, public enterprises, kindergartens, schools, public
universities and hospitals available to the Serb minority.
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