Bodo Weber, a senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council in Berlin
Chancellor Angela Merkel will come to Belgrade with a clear message that an agreement must be reached so that Germany can give the green light for the opening of the first negotiating chapters. It’s an old, but well-known list of obligations, says in an interview Bodo Weber, a senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council in Berlin.
If in the future will be agreed the principles for the establishment of the ZSO, will it be enough to open a chapters, or the whole package should be agreed?
I have the impression that the framework agreement on the ZSO is hindering agreement on the whole package. That package would certainly be enough to open the chapters. It seems that now it is very doubtful whether it will ever be another meeting in Brussels before the arrival of Chancellor in Belgrade. But as I have already said – in the case of agreement the German Government will surely give the green light.
A few years ago German parliament adopted a document that is sort of a “negotiating framework” for Serbia. Will the Bundestag do as it promised, or some deviations are possible?
I would not say it’s a kind of framework – formal negotiating framework exists, but it goes much further than a declaration of the Bundestag. If there is agreement on the package, which would open the way to implementation of the remaining obligations from the Brussels Agreement, the Bundestag will not block Serbia.
The declaration mentions the opening of the bridge in Kosovska Mitrovica and Serbian officials are wondering how that topic appeared in Brussels. How do you comment it?
The problem of the so-called Peace Park on the bridge was made after the Brussels Agreement, due to who knows which reasons, but with the support of Serbian government officials. Now, no one can complain that it was introduced as “a new condition”.
Will the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina be reduced to what is written in the Brussels agreement? Or it includes all that Germany and other countries consider under the normalization (such as the removal of the Peace Park), and in Serbia it is usually called the new conditions?
The Brussels agreement was only “the first agreement on normalization of relations,” while the whole package of conditions relates to the full normalization before Serbia joins the EU, which means recognizing, in formal form, the reality of Kosovo as a state. It is included in the negotiating framework of the EU, which means that in the accession process, through all the 35 chapters, territory of Kosovo will be de facto cut out from the Serbian state and its institutions. The Serbian Government has adopted this document, but since 2014 the entire implementation of the agreement was blocked. We have seen a return to the famous spin “status neutral” and “new conditions”. This does not however “save” the Belgrade from facing the substance of the agreement.
