Serbs will ensure that the president of the court and Serb judges will be placed in other courts south of the Ibar river, in municipalities where Serbs are either the majority or live in significant numbers.
The Serbian delegation in Brussels practically reached the end of their talks over the judiciary with Pristina, while the final agreements are expected to take place at the next round of the dialogue, which is planned for the end of this month following the creation of the new government.
The agreement between Kosovo and Serbia implies that the ratio of judges will be 60:40 in favor of Serbs, and as court staff they will have two-thirds of the majority. Ivica Dacic said that Serbs achieved the maximum in regards to talks over the future court in Mitrovica, while Aleksandar Vucic stated that ‘the best result was achieved for the Serbian nation’.
According to the chairperson of the Serbian parliament’s Council for Kosovo and Metohija, Milovan Drecun, the court will actually have ‘two administrations’. He said that the president of the court will be a Serb who will ‘prevent any wrongdoings and that cases are allocated to the other side’. It is also important, according to him, that there will be an equal number of prosecutors and stressed that this was one of the major achievements in the talks.
“The new thing is that the element of participation of the Serbs is introduced in the Kosovo judiciary, through Serbian judges and prosecutors. Of course we wished for different solutions, however this is the most we could have achieved at this moment,” said Drecun.
Driton Lajçi, spokesperson and advisor to the Kosovo Minister for Justice Hajredin Kuçi, told Politika that the court will have jurisdiction over seven municipalities, have two buildings and that the majority of judges and prosecutors will be Serbs. He added that Kosovo laws will not be amended, whereas the Kosovo Judicial Council will have to bring certain decisions, while it remains to be seen whether it will happen now or following the last round of talks.
Serbian opposition parties have sharply criticized the ‘best result for the Serbian nation’. The member of the Presidency of the Democratic Party, Borislav Stefanovic, said that the agreement on the judiciary is evidence that the Serbian government’s interpretation of the Brussels agreement was incorrect and done for the sake of the election campaign.
“Now they will have to explain to those, from whom they received huge support in Kosovo and Metohia, that there will be a much higher number of Albanian judges and prosecutors, that the applicable law will be the Kosovo one, that judges will sit in court-rooms with Kosovo statehood insignia. They have to say it courageously, as it is, and not to keep sending Vulin and others who are reciting epic poetry to us,” Stefanovic told Beta agency.
The Vice-President of the Democratic Party of Serbia, Slobodan Samardzic, said that the Brussels agreement is in line with the policy to gradually hand over jurisdiction to Albanians, meaning Thaçi. “If the court in Mitrovica was in our system, and now is in theirs, then it is a complete defeat,” Samardzic told Beta and added that there are presidents of the courts who are Serbs in Romania and Hungary as well.
