Analyst: EU Will Not Tolerate Signing for the Sake of Signing in Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue

Strahinja Subotic (EPC)

The focus in up-coming talks between Belgrade and Pristina will be on harmonizing concrete steps in applying the Agreement on the Road to Normalization between Kosovo and Serbia, reached with the EU's mediation to avoid the agreement being a "dead letter," Strahinja Subotic, from the Belgrade Center for European Policy, has said.

On March 9 Subotic told the BETA news agency's daily European service that the EU had shown that it had experienced a kind of geopolitical sobering and would not tolerate signing for the sake of signing but true normalization for achieving peace, stability and a future joint European future. According to Subotic, a program manager and senior researcher, the document is the politically most important since 2013 when the Brussels agreement was signed and as such needs time to be implemented for several reasons.

The first, Subotic said, is that in the future attention will be paid as part of the dialogue that all previous agreements are fully implemented in practice. Then, the EU will demand the development of the Community of Serb Municipalities which means the composition of a statute and institutionalization according to Pristina's legal system.

Also, he added, a model that will formalize the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo is yet to be developed and a high level of protection of Serb religious and cultural heritage in Kosovo needs to be secured in accordance with European models. Subotic further said that time would show whether Belgrade and Pristina are capable of sticking to agreements continuously, which shifts the focus from the mere act of signing to overseeing the implementation of what was signed.