Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister, Enver Hoxhaj, said in an interview to the news website that the European Union is not what it was in 2012 when Kosovo got the visa liberalization roadmap. “This organization could very soon face internal elections and they will have an impact on visa liberalisation for Kosovo,” he said.

For over two years now, Kosovo is dealing with the demarcation issue and the problem remains the same. Montenegro has reiterated its position: no renegotiations or arbitrage. What do you think could be the solution also given the latest assessment of the new border delineation commission?

The tasks of the new commission and our expectations have been discussed in the Kosovo government. I don’t think the commission should deal with the public and react to every situation. We are waiting for the full report and then we will discuss based on the truths and facts and not based on media statements. As I have joined politics from the academic world, I know what is true, what is nearly true and what is partly true, the same goes for facts. During my tenure as Foreign Minister, I closely followed the work of four commissions on the border delineation with Montenegro and the reevaluation of the process. The agreement signed between Kosovo and Montenegro represents the real border situation. For the current circumstances, we need to recall that even in the case of the border delineation between Slovenia and Croatia, the Court of Arbitration made its final decision based on cadastral principles, the same principles that were used during the delineation of the border between Kosovo and Montenegro. Therefore, I expect a report that will describe the real situation based on methods and facts.

Former Rapporteur for Kosovo, Ulrike Lunacek, said during her last visit to Kosovo that the country must not lose the opportunity to get visa liberalization and must ratify the demarcation deal. Is it likely that the people will not get visa liberalization for a long time?

The European Union is not what it was in 2012 when we got the visa liberalisation roadmap because populist parties are on the rise and the refugee wave from the Middle East has almost changed the political landscape in every country. Parties that have traditionally supported Kosovo are faced with decreasing influence in respective countries and European societies are becoming increasingly rigid towards the free movement of people, one of the fundamental concepts of the EU. It is good that elections in Germany, France, United Kingdom and some other European countries, speak of political clarity in these countries. But the EU will soon have internal elections. So we need to use this last opportunity before the new election cycle which could make the EU even more rigid toward visa liberalisation. We should not give anyone the excuse to say that Kosovo is failing to meet the last requirement and therefore we cannot allow the citizens of Kosovo to travel freely in the Schengen zone.

We are now in the final phase of dialogue, but now at the level of presidents. Serbia has said it will never recognize the state of Kosovo. What is the Kosovo government’s position vis-à-vis the EU-facilitated dialogue and what should be the outcome of the process in your opinion?

For the end of 2017 we have two key objectives in dialogue. First, all agreements reached so far must be implemented. Serbia has not implemented some of the agreements, Kosovo has not implemented some of them, and hereby I refer to the formation of the Association [of Serb-majority municipalities]. But the main responsibility for failing to implement the agreements falls on Serbia, especially the agreement on the energy and others, and also the lack of European pressure on Serbia because the EU’s role is not only to implement agreements but also to apply direct influence on Serbia. Therefore it is absurd to hear about timelines for Serbia’s membership in the EU, if Serbia is still a destabilizing factor in the region, Russia’s stretched hand in the geopolitical sphere in the Balkans, and a country with an anti-European approach towards Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia. The implementation of agreements has to do with the credibility of dialogue and we cannot move on to a new phase without implementing the agreements in practice. Our second objective is to have timelines for dialogue. We cannot hold dialogue with Serbia forever and as we have addressed some of our concerns through the agreements, now our goal is to have a peace agreement between Kosovo and Serbia under one common name: membership in the UN and mutual recognition. This is the only context we can discuss with Serbia. Whereas when I see debates about internal dialogue in Serbia, I have the impression that it is not 2017 but 1987. They remind me of the roundtables of so-called Serb intellectuals and Milosevic’s promotion as a new factor in Serbian and Yugoslav politics at the time. Therefore, nothing less than mutual recognition should be discussed and this is not about naïve expectations but rather with the irreversible reality of the state of Kosovo. Kosovo certainly needs a new platform how to address dialogue. This will be a platform of the state, society and political parties of Kosovo.

What is happening with the recognition from Suriname? Did you receive an official notification from this state whether or not it has withdrawn its recognition or is this all part of Serbia’s propaganda?

I am not Foreign Minister, and the Foreign Minister has under his mandate Kosovo’s bilateral relations with countries, including the recognition or non-recognition from Suriname. It is true that last year during a summit of Latin American countries and the Caribbean, I met the President of Suriname and after a lengthy explanation and my official request to them to recognize Kosovo, the recognition came after several days. For the time being, I don’t know the details of what is happening, but what the Serbian Foreign Minister said that a Serbian national has influenced Suriname, speaks of something else. This leads us to the question about the methods and means that Serbia uses in different countries to damage Kosovo internationally and if Serbian diplomacy, as part of the foreign service, did not have a role in the Suriname case, but that this was done by informal people, this should raise many concerns. This is not foreign policy this is para-politics.

How much of a negative impact can this have in terms of other recognitions, or can it happen that a country that has already recognized Kosovo could withdraw its recognition. How common is this practice in the world?

Serbia has an active agenda to damage Kosovo internationally, be it in terms of bilateral relations with countries, or Kosovo’s relations with multilateral institutions and its membership in different organizations. We need to understand the core of the issue concerning recognitions for Kosovo and what this means for our new country. The majority of countries, after the United Nations were formed in 1945, received collective recognitions by joining the UN. After receiving collective recognitions, these countries did not need individual recognitions, but they certainly established diplomatic relations based on geostrategic or geo-economic interests. Kosovo could not get collective recognitions because it is not a member of the UN. So we need to get individual recognitions, asking different countries of the world to recognize Kosovo’s independence and sovereignty through diplomatic recognition. When a country recognized Kosovo this was the first step: we signed a diplomatic agreement with a country and we advanced our relations to a new phase. When a country voted in favor of Kosovo’s membership in an organization, or when we signed bilateral and multilateral agreements, our relations with that country involved a broad range of political, economic and social cooperation. Therefore, the growing number of recognitions for Kosovo has strengthened our sovereignty and exercised our sovereignty through bilateral or multilateral cooperation. Recognitions are the foundation of Kosovo’s external sovereignty based on which we can build new relations.

Your party is now ranked differently after the local elections. Maybe you did not expect this. What is the position of your political party, in your opinion?

 The October 22 elections have shown that the PDK is where it has been in the last 10 years, a dominating force in politics. We have won in some municipalities and we will go to runoff elections in 10 municipalities. This shows that at the local level too, based on municipalities and the number of citizens, the PDK is the leading political force in the country. We have said this during our election campaign that Prizren, Ferizaj and Mitrovica, and also other municipalities, have special importance for us, and I am confident that after the November 19 elections we will lead even more municipalities than we have done so far.

You said that after the local elections, you will hold elections in your party too. Do you expect major reforms?

We will hold the party convention and elections after the local elections, but we have to set an exact date. But reforms in the PDK are almost part of what has happened in local elections. The PDK has run with young candidates for posts of mayors and municipal advisors, which shows that the Democratic Party of Kosovo is very open to society. As the PDK has been the key state-building force in the country, from now on it must turn into the key force of modernizing society, economic development, creating new jobs and improving the quality of people’s lives. The PDK’s platform in an ever-changing world will also be a topic of discussion in all the mechanisms and among members of the PDK. This will happen at the next election convention.