EU: Kosovo to Return to Dialogue, Serbia Needs to Recognize Kosovo

Talks Belgrade – Pristina (BETAPHOTO/European Council/Mario Salerno)

The future of Serbia and Kosovo lies in mutual recognition, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Kosovo Viola von Cramon-Taubadel was quoted as saying by Deutsche Welle on March 20.

"If Kosovo doesn't want to lose its European perspective, the dialogue with Serbia needs to be back on Albin Kurti's and his new government's list of priorities," the EP official said. She recalled that the matter had been neglected during the election campaign, Vucic

which focused on internal reforms instead and, according to her, was commendable, but from Brussels' point of view the dialogue, too, was very important.

The German Greens' MEP said it took two to talk, and that she had a clear message for Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic as well.

"The recognition of Kosovo is a condition for progress in Serbia's accession talks with the European Union, too.

This was made very clear to Belgrade, and we hope this will have an effect. There have been signals in that direction, as President Vucic said once that Serbia could expect things that would be hard to swallow, but would have to be done. The question now is whether this position could have majority support at home," Cramon-Taubadel said.