EU and Russia: Kosovo-Serbia Negotiations
EU and Russia: Kosovo-Serbia Negotiations

Summary/Abstract: Disunity between the EU member states (with five member states not recognizing the independence of Kosovo) has weakened the position of the EU’s foreign policy regarding Kosovo-Serbia relations. This disunity has opened further space for Russia to successfully disrupt an attempt by the West to establish consolidated liberal democracies in the territory of former Yugoslavia. The policy of disruption was undertaken by supporting the Serbian positionof obstructing state-building in Kosovo. It was also carried out through a successful disregard of the International Court of Justice’s opinion in July 2010 recognizing that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not contravene international law. The EU was given a mandate by the UN General Assembly to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Its External Action Service had undertaken a long and rather unsuccessful attempt to reach something resembling “normalization”. But it got bogged down in micromanaging details while not establishing viable principles of negotiation. The logical consequence of such an approach is an anti-European idea of swaping land and people, entertained throughout 2018 by the Presidents Vučić and Thaçi of Serbia and Kosovo, respectively. With the failure of such an approach, there is now an opportunity to return to European values defining bilateral relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

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