The modified statutes of the Serbian municipalities in northern Kosovo remain status neutral. Mitrovica ordered that the statute reads “representative associations” instead of ZSO.
Serbian municipalities in northern Kosovo will adopt amended statutes this week, since they received comments on the original text from the Kosovo Ministry of Local Government. But these documents will remain status neutral and comply with the Brussels agreement.
Most of the complaints from Pristina were of a technical nature and many of the suggestions were accepted. One of the complaints made to the Assembly of Mitrovica, for example, was related to the ability of the Mitrovica municipality to merge with the Community of Serbian municipalities. Pristina’s request, however, was to revise the wording so that municipality can be part of “representative associations” and that municipal jurisdictions cannot be transferred to it.
The president of the Assembly of Mitrovica, Ksenija Bozovic, told Novosti that the statute amendment will be as flexible as possible, but there is no compromise about the ZSO: “We will not change anything in connection to that because the ZSO is according to the Brussels agreement. Our deadline is 25 April, and by then we will hold a session of the Assembly and adopt a new statute.”
The Zvecane session is already scheduled for next Thursday, because the 30-day deadline to change their document for the municipality expires on that day. Darko Radovanovic, from the Zvecane Assembly said that the expert committees eliminated technical deficiencies, but he notes that the statute remains in the spirit of being status neutral: “We do not mention the Republic of Kosovo in a single sentence, or Kosovo in general, only our municipality. In the preamble, we refer to the Brussels agreement because local elections were held based on that.”
The Law will not pass
The president of the CI “Srpska” Vladeta Kostic said on Sunday that he hopes that provincial elections will be conducted under the old law and that the new law, which reduces the rights of minorities, will not pass. He said that the Serbian community will not allow rights to be affected.
