In an interview with Voice of America Albanian Service, Prime Minister of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj said Kosovo will not revoke tariffs on Serbian goods despite calls from the European Union. He said Kosovo continuously expressed concerns over Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s failure to respect the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA): “But never did the EU react. I can assure you we made tens of complaints, reports, requests for assistance, and never received any feedback. You know we lose €30 from the energy agreement that Serbia does not implement. We also lose millions on IBM (Integrated Border Management) which again Serbia does not implement,” Haradinaj said. “Not only did Serbia not respect economic trade relations with Kosovo, be it through CEFTA or other agreements, but went on aggression by endangering the statehood of Kosovo.” He said Kosovo was forced to impose import tariffs and it will be lifted “when we sit down and reach agreement on all topics, including recognition.”
Asked about his recent criticism of the EU’s approach to Kosovo and more specifically to the role of the High Representative Federica Mogherini in the dialogue, Haradinaj said there are three issues that concern Kosovo with regards to its relations with the EU: “Two of these are more evident and include EU’s failure to implement contract for visa liberalisation even though Kosovo did its part of the deal and the failure of the High Representative Mogherini, Commissioner Hahn and other colleagues, to take any responsibility for this and leaving us to lobby with each government on our own while knowing the contract has been met. Second, derailing of the dialogue from being on normalisation to turning into a dialogue on status, territories or borders, which makes no sense. And finally, there is the bilateral Kosovo-EU relations with the EU being very stringent towards Kosovo by keeping us at the initiation stage and not allowing us to move forward with other processes.”
On the dialogue with Serbia, Haradinaj said the border issue was newly-introduced product and that the facilitator of the dialogue was mandated to normalise open issues between Kosovo and Serbia and not to discuss territory issues which Haradinaj said would be a setback. “Whoever pushes Kosovo towards discussing or opening the issue of our territory, our borders, is an enemy,” Haradinaj said adding: “This proposal is not coming from our allies, make no mistake.” He spoke further about the draft comprehensive agreement which he has presented recently saying it is a rough draft but that it paves way for Kosovo and Serbia’s mutual recognition. “We support the dialogue but the dialogue needs to be normalized,” Haradinaj underlined. He said this cannot be achieved by the EU on its own: “It is very wrong for someone to believe that Ms Mogherini will resolve the issue between Kosovo and Serbia, this is evident and things have even worsened during Ms Mogherini’s leadership so it would be good for the U.S. to get a seat at the table. It would be good to also invite at the table the Quint countries, Berlin, and finish this issue.”
