Belgrade based daily Blic writes today that the great American diplomatic return to the Balkans, obviously initiated by the EU’s inability to unravel the Kosovo knot, has sparked nervousness in the EU, and emissaries come to see what can be done after Mogherini’s diplomatic collapse.
One of them, Peter Beyer, a member of the German Bundestag and special rapporteur for the CDU / CSU parliamentary group for the Balkans, who met with several Belgrade journalists early in the week after meeting with Aleksandar Vucic, Marko Djuric and other officials.
Commenting on the talks with Serbian officials, he said that they were, among other things, revolving around a possible exchange of territories between Kosovo and Serbia.
– Both the President and the Ministers are aware of my position and Germany’s. We are against exchanging territories – says Beyer, whose position was expressed in one of the past visits to Serbia, and that was Serbia’s EU membership won’t happen without Kosovo’s recognition.
In the context of that statement, reporters asked: if the European Union is sincere in its intention to admit Serbia to the European Union, and a precondition is Kosovo’ recognition, why not admit Serbia first and then seek recognition because Serbia is not in a position to dictate conditions.
– The road map is clear; two players Serbia and Kosovo should work on a legally binding agreement. We talked about the recognition process. Of course, we think it would be better that before Serbia’s EU membership comes the full recognition of Kosovo, but we know that this is complicated and almost impossible at this point. It also has to do with changing the Constitution, which is not a simple matter, but that concept and proposal is not new. This is a concept that we once had between two Germanys, and that ended with the reunification of the two Germanys, which is not our wish in the case of Kosovo and Serbia. DDR and SR Germany coexisted in international relations, we did not block ourselves in international organizations, but we did not recognize each other. That kind of coexistence would be feasible between Serbia and Kosovo, and I talked to the President of Serbia about this and it’s an idea that is still worth thinking about. How this will be achieved, I do not know, might be easier if the European Commission had a more constructive role in all this.
