Belgrade’s delegation said it was satisfied with an agreement reached in Brussels on Thursday during a technical round of the EU-sponsored Kosovo dialogue.
According to them, the deal “prevents the abolition of Serbian license plates in Kosovo.”
The EU announced late on Tuesday in a statement that “following extensive discussions, Edita Tahiri, Minister for dialogue, and Marko Djuric, Chief Negotiator for the dialogue, reached an arrangement on the implementation of the remaining elements from the EU-facilitated dialogue agreement on freedom of movement from 2011.”
“In order to ease the free flow of people and goods, the parties agreed that so called ‘proba’ plates will no longer be required as of November 15, 2016 for traveling from one side to the other. Both sides agreed to cover relevant parts of the respective license plates with stickers. License plates used by residents in Kosovo will not be affected by this sticker regime,” the statement said, adding:
“On license plates, parties agreed that the registration of all vehicles with license plates issued by Kosovo authorities will commence on January 15, 2017 and will last for 12 months at the end of which the issue will be reviewed within the dialogue. Kosovo will extend the validity of KS license plates for 5 years at the end of which the issue will be reviewed within the dialogue.”
The parties also agreed that “an information campaign will be carried out by them and the EU to explain to the affected residents modalities for registering vehicles with these license plates. Content and modalities of this campaign will be discussed within the next weeks.”
“The EU welcomes the outcome of today’s discussion and urges both sides to make progress on all other outstanding implementation work, in particular on telecoms, the Association/Community of Serb majority municipalities and on energy,” the statement said.
“On telecoms, extensive discussions took place and progress has been made on key elements for implementation. Both sides agreed to continue the negotiations on September 26 in Brussels under EU facilitation,” it concluded.
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