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LOCAL PRESS

 

The last Brussels round for the date (RTS)

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic are taking part in talks with Kosovo Premier Hashim Thaqi in the cabinet of the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, at the 20^th round of the dialogue on the normalization of Belgrade-Pristina relations. One of the topics is the judiciary and what is actually being discussed is the structure of the Basic Court in Kosovska Mitrovica, which, according to the Brussels agreement, should reflect the local ethnic structure. The aim is to achieve as much progress as possible on the eve of Catherine Ashton’s report to the EU Council before the start of Serbia’s EU accession talks, said Ashton’s spokesperson Maja Kocijancic.

 

Pristina establishing customs at Jarinje and Brnjak crossings (Politika)

Customs services, which are in the system of Pristina and in accordance with the Brussels agreement, will start operating tomorrow at two integrated crossings – Jarinje, which leads towards Raska from the direction of Leposavic, and Brnjak, which connects northern Kosovo with Rozaje. This was confirmed for Politika by Nenad Rasic, the Minister in the Kosovo government, noting that clearance of goods and payment of duties on goods arriving from Serbia proper to the territory of northern Kosovo will commence on 14 December symbolically because they still need to employ another 26 customs officers and to establish a shipping house. Rasic stresses that all trucks, vans transporting goods will have to go to the terminal in southern Mitrovica. He also says that the Kosovo customs service will carry out all customs duties, and not EULEX, all agreed and initialed in Brussels. Unlike the Minister in Hashim Thaqi’s government, the Deputy Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Krstimir Pantic claims differently: “The Brussels agreement specifies that customs officers at the integrated crossings do not have visible insignia of the state of Kosovo. As I hear, this will not occur and EULEX representatives told us at a meeting two days ago that Pristina withdrew a unilateral move. We request that EULEX continues to play an executive role at the crossings, and not Albanian customs officers, because this is the agreement. Apart from this, the Fund, which would receive money from collecting duties, doesn’t have a representative of the Serb community. It has the EU representative Samuel Zbogar and an Albanian representative, and the fact that a bank account of a Slovenian bank, with a branch office in Pristina, has been opened so that all of the money will go via the Central Bank of Kosovo, proves that the EU and the Albanian are violating the agreement.” The residents of northern Kosovo are dissatisfied, especially businessmen that are already announcing gatherings and blockade of roads towards Raska and Rozaje. “The people will not accept to have at integrated crossings customs officers with statehood insignia. That was not agreed,” says Pantic. The EU press service states they have received questions addressed to Samuel Zbogar, but because he is too busy they will not be able to answer quickly. EULEX spokesperson Irina Gudeljevic says: “It is on Belgrade and Pristina to communicate regarding the dialogue and the agreement that they signed in Brussels. We are ready to help and assist, in accordance with our mandate. After all, both sides know very well what they agreed at the meetings of the working groups on 19 April and later on.”

 

Statute of Union of Serb Municipalities in final phase (Novosti)

“The Union of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija should be regulated according to the principle of European regions and should have jurisdictions in the sphere of health care, education, urban planning and economic development. We are preparing its statute in this spirit,” Novosti was told by Ljubomir Maric, member of the Management Team that is working on this document, noting that the draft statute offered by Pristina doesn’t differentiate the Union from an association, which doesn’t reflect the Brussels agreement. Maric explains that the Serbian side requested in Brussels to give the Union elements from European regions that exist in France, Spain or Germany, which has three levels of authority. The essence is for the local communities also decide on some things. “That is logical if we head in the direction of European values. We are in serious final works on the statute and it remains to be harmonized with the local self-governments. We couldn’t have done this before the elections and election of new mayors, because the municipalities are the ones that should be content with this document. According to Maric’s expectation, the Union of Serb Municipalities could be formed at the end of January and then its statute would be approved officially.

 

Selakovic: Demands of Albanians in South-East Serbia unrealistic (Tanjug)

Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic has stated in Krusevac that the demands of the Albanians in South-East Serbia, which refer to the court network, are absolutely irrational and unrealistic, pointing out that this issue needs to be resolved through dialogue, and not blackmail, threats and leaving talks. Selakovic recalled that Presevo has a special Magistrate Court and that the new network envisages a special Basic Court in Bujanovac. The analysis we have conducted, and which concerns only personnel capacities and number of cases that exist in Presevo and Bujanovac show that the needs of these two municipalities will be met with one Basic Court. “Had we only stuck to this and had we not considered the ethnic structure of the population in this part of Serbia, even a Basic Court would have not existed,” explains Selakovic. The new court network that will have 66 basic courts and 58 public prosecutions will start operating on 1 January 2014.

 

Cooperation of Serbian and Kosovo Chambers of Commerce (Tanjug)

The Serbian Chamber of Commerce (PKS) and the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce (KCC) signed an agreement on cooperation in Brussels on Friday, on the margins of the 20^th round of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, the European Commission released. The agreement was signed by PKS President Zeljko Sertic and KCC President Safet Gerdzaliu. The official signing in the building of the European External Action Service was attended by Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaqi.

 

Davenport: EU preparing for inter-governmental conference (Beta)

“The EU Council is ready to adopt the framework for Serbia’s accession talks and the EU is intensively preparing for the first inter-governmental conference, which should be held by the end of January next year,” said the Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Michael Davenport. He said that on 28 June the EU Council had decided to open accession talks for Serbia and also gave instructions to the European Commission to draw up a negotiating framework. The Council put it clear then that they expect Belgrade and Pristina to continue with the realization of the Brussels agreement so it is implemented by the end of the year, said Davenport. He emphasized that work on the definition of the negotiating framework continues and that the process of the implementation of the Brussels agreement has progressed far.

 

EU: Two frameworks for Serbia (Tanjug)

Lithuania, as the EU presiding country, has drawn up a version of the negotiating framework for Serbia, which contains much less conditioning regarding the Kosovo issue than the previously discussed German-British non-paper does, Tanjug learns in Brussels. In an informal document of September, Germany and Britain demanded that Serbia’s progress in the negotiating platform in EU integrations should be formally related to progress in the in the process of normalization of Belgrade-Pristina relations, while the Lithuanian proposal, to which agency Tanjug has had access, envisages a weaker link between the two issues. Germany and Britain also demand that Chapter 35, which speaks of the normalization process, should be related to all the other chapters as well, while Lithuania proposes that the normalization issue should be discussed, above all, but not solely, in Chapter 35, which entails a weaker link between the Kosovo issue and other chapters.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

OHR calls on MPs not to support amendments to Elektroprijenos law (Fena)

The OHR called on the B&H parliament not to support the proposed amendments to the law on the establishment of the electricity company in B&H, because they are undermining the capability of Elektroprijenos (electricity company in B&H) to provide reliable and long-lasting electric power transmission, and with it the supply in B&H. Prior to the distribution of any funds to Elektroprijenos shareholders, they should make the necessary, agreed in advance, and essential investments in the electrical system and finance the obligations for the functioning of the company, the OHR said in a statement. The statement adds that Elektroprijenos is a company of vital significance, whose purpose is to serve the interests of citizens and the business community in B&H. “It is more important now than ever that Elektroprijenos receive support from the government across B&H,” the OHR emphasizes.

 

Serious warning from EU over Elektroprijenos (Oslobodjenje)

It is still uncertain whether amendments to the law on founding Elektroprijenos will be found at the session of the B&H House of Representatives, after the Council of Ministers unanimously adopted them on 5 December and put them into further procedure urgently. The proposed changes are seriously worrying to the union members of this company and the EU, and therefore they are sending warnings that B&H citizens could literally be left in the dark! Dividends from this company are part of the earlier SDP-SNSD agreement. “Amendments don’t hold any guarantee that representatives of the B&H government and the EU agreed on at a meeting in Brussels last November, but rather just enable the division of money from the Elektroprijenos account, where there is currently around 300 million KM,” a high-ranking EU official in Sarajevo told Oslobodjenje. With the amendments, the present legal deadline of a ten year ban on dividends among shareholders of Elektroprijenos – the entities of Republika Srpska and the B&H Federation – is abolished. The entities with the proposed amendments now wish to reach 100 million KM, which would fill holes in the budgets, but is not an obstacle to the continued division of spoils until all the money is spent in the Elektroprijenos account. “With the existing law, the money cannot be divided before a period of 10 years from the founding of Elektroprijenos, so until 2016. It is clear that the country has the need for money, and that with the agreement in Brussels it was determined that the profit of Elektroprijenos would be available to shareholders, the entities, but when the company management is functioning, when the revised financial reports from the past years are adopted, and an investment plan is bade. When the final account is received and the cost of essential investment is looked at, what remains is the profit that can then be divided between the entities. Not a single obligation from this agreement is met in these changes to the law,” our EU interlocutor said. The EU warns of the catastrophic state of the already unsatisfactory Elektroprijenos grid, into which for years they have not invested, noting that is questionable whether there are even any reserve parts in case of a possible catastrophe. They add that investment in machinery is essential for B&H, and that the electrical grid must be expanded and renovated. “All this should deeply concern B&H citizens, who could soon be sitting in the dark. Investment isn’t mentioned in the amendments, and the formulation of profit is unclear and could mean anything. We are warning parliamentarians to correct this through amendments,” said our source. This diplomat adds that the adopted amendments are identical to an earlier attempt at amending the law from October 2012, at which point Stefano Sannino, director-general of the enlargement directorate at the European Commission, warned B&H authorities in writing. Mevludin Kuljanin, president of the Elektroprijenos union, says that the Elektroprijenos shareholders assembly, which would finally select an administration and adopt an investment plan, could be held on 28 December, and that it would be good to not adopt the aforementioned amendments before this. We are learning that the plan is in fact different, that the assembly will be held only if the amendments are adopted in advance. “I wish we could address the parliamentarians and tell them what sort of catastrophic consequences there could be if such amendments are adopted without the previous measures in place. Unblocking the work of the company for us is essential, which means a new administration, urgent interventions in the network, and we need more workers. Everything agreed in Brussels could long be respected, but if it doesn’t work by the agreement from 2012, the situation could be critical,” he said.

 

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Is Serbia the new Ukraine? (New Europe, by Lana Blagojevic, 12 December 2013)

President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to suspend preparations for signing an Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, for the sake of maintaining relations with Russia, caused a public outrage from Ukrainian pro-European citizens, triggering the largest protest to take place in Ukraine since Orange revolution.

Nearly half of Ukrainians feel that they need to build their future within the European Union framework, no matter how economically fragile it might be.  What they see in the European Union is what Yankovich and the Soviet Union have withheld from them: democracy and greater freedom. What Yanukovich sees, on the other hand, is Russian economic power and support, which comes at a certain price.

Yanukovich’s politics and Russian economic power have an impact outside of Ukrainian borders. In the light of recent events in Ukraine and launching of Russian South Stream project in Serbia, there have been speculations in Serbian media that Serbia should consider following the same path.

A week after the protests in Ukraine began, and a few days after the launch of South Stream,  Vuk Draškovic, a leader of SPO party (the Serbian Renewal Movement), said: “Serbia is in great danger of becoming the new Ukraine”. The politician claims that Serbia is exposed to pressures to give up on European Union and join, both politically and economically, one “other Union”, alluding to Putin’s proposed political and economic union, The Eurasian Union.

Draškovic says that the “a rising tide of this propaganda” can be seen through recent events such as the Russian Ambassador’s speech to present advantages of Eurasian Union over the European Union, as well as statements by some Serbian politicians.

Soon after the South Stream project was launched, the Russian Ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Chepurin, said that South Stream will give 10 times more than Serbia will get from any donations in the process of integration. The Ambassador said that Russia does not want to interfere with Serbia’s European Integration process, under the condition that Serbia does not join NATO or anyhow "additionally complicate its ties with the Eurasian Union, which will be created in 2015, and which considers development of relations with Serbia as very important."

To further confirm Draškovic’s fears about “a rising tide of propaganda” Daèiæ said that “Western powers have in fact pushed Serbia closer to Russia," referring to criticism that Serbia incurred due to tightening relations with Russia.  The Prime Minister said that partnership with Russia strengthened mostly due to West’s (the EU’s) disinterest in building relations with Serbia, so Serbia had to turn to Russia.

While Dacic has never explicitly expressed preference of Eurasia over Europe, Nenad Popovic, Vice-President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and President of the Economic Council of the DSS (Democratic Party of Serbia) clearly stated that he does not see a point anymore in joining the EU, and that the Eurasian Union offers better opportunity for Serbia: “The EU is in a major economic decline and this trend will continue. On the other hand, we have paved the way for future cooperation with the countries of the Eurasian Union, where our country, thanks to the duty-free agreement, has the ability to export more than 95 percent of domestic products duty free.”

Of course, Popovic’s view should be taken with reserve, especially since the President of the Economic Council of the DSS assesses only the economic factors of these relations, while not taking others in consideration. Also, although Dacic’s statement could be interpreted as “pro-Russian”, the Prime Minister said “I don’t doubt that our path is to the EU”. Dacic pointed that the Eurasian Union is not an option for Serbia because Serbia does not belong there geographically, but will continue maintaining close partnership with Russia throughout the process of European integration.

Beyond the parallels brought up recently between Ukraine and Serbia where Russia plays the main role, another important parallel between the countries could be drawn: the  transitional history parallel. They are both communistic countries that came to existence  after a  federal break up, although communism in Serbia was much more liberal.

They both worked on achieving democracy, and one of the turning points happened in 2000, when both countries changed Milosevic and Kuchma, the presidents that were involved in numerous corruption scandals and restricting freedom of expression, especially media.

Thus, both countries need to break up with the communist ties from the past and ensure at least different, if not better future. In that case, The Eurasian Union, often considered as a nostalgic recreation of the Soviet Union, is not the answer.

 

Kosovo Attains Status (on Facebook) It Has Sought for Years: Nation (New York Times, by Dan Bilefsky, 12 December 2013)

PARIS — Ever since little Kosovo proclaimed itself an independent state five years ago, it has failed to win all the recognition it so craves. Neither the United Nations, which confers legitimacy, nr all the European Union, whose members are divided on the question, much less Serbia, from which Kosovo broke away, recognize the birth of a new European nation.

But after a campaign waged by an army of devoted Kosovars and strategically placed allies, Kosovo is hailing a grant of legitimacy by a new arbiter of national identity: Facebook.

Last month, Kosovo declared victory, after its officials said Facebook approved a number of changes, including giving users registering from the diamond-shaped area on the Balkan Peninsula the option to identify themselves as citizens of Kosovo, rather than the decidedly less attractive option for many there, Serbia. They can also use the Facebook function that allows users to “check in” on the website from locations within Kosovo, like a cinema or a bar.

It is not as if Kosovo has joined NATO. But in an era when accumulating “likes” may top a seat in the General Assembly, at least for many young opinion leaders online, Kosovo’s leadership is hailing a change on a social media site as a diplomatic coup worthy of Talleyrand.

“Facebook has grown to 1.2 billion users in eight years, faster than the growth of Islam, Christianity and the Internet itself,” said Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s 34-year-old deputy foreign minister and the leader of the government’s digital diplomacy.

He said that having Kosovo fully included on Facebook had been a priority, along with the still-elusive goals of having Kosovo compete in the Eurovision song contest and in the European Champions League in soccer.

“Being recognized on the soccer pitch and online has far greater resonance than some back room in Brussels,” Mr. Selimi said.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. But because Facebook, mirroring the United Nations, did not initially list Kosovo as a state, many among the country’s majority ethnic Albanian population opted to register as being from a country other than Kosovo.

In protest, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla leader, said he had identified himself as being from neighboring Albania. Others among Facebook’s more than 200,000 Kosovar users said they had chosen distant Antigua.

Kosovo is recognized by the United States and a majority of European Union members. But five, including Spain, which is battling separatist movements of its own, refuse to recognize it. Serbia is also vehemently against recognizing Kosovo’s independence, and Russia, a staunch Serbian ally and a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, has blocked Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, stifling its economic and political development.

So every bit of legitimacy is important to Mr. Thaci’s government.

It rallied citizens to write messages on Twitter and bombard Facebook with thousands of emails. Kosovar ministers said they also lobbied Facebook officials in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, and enlisted Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, whose longstanding support of Kosovo led the country to name a street after him. Mr. Engel said he appealed to Facebook officials in Washington, contending that listing Kosovo as a country was analogous to updating a map.

“I told Facebook that Kosovo was a legitimate country recognized by more than 100 nations, and that they are no longer part of Serbia,” Mr. Engel said in a telephone interview. “It was not a hard sell.”

The Kosovo government said it had also received 500,000 euros, about $690,000, from Britain and Norway to help with its national digital diplomacy strategy, including training editors to update Wikipedia entries about Kosovo.

Online reaction to news of the Facebook changes was swift. “Facebook recognizes Kosovo as a state,” Kosovo’s minister for European Union integration, Vlora Citaku, wrote on Twitter. The American ambassador to Kosovo, Tracey Ann Jacobson, congratulated Kosovo on Twitter.

But some Serbs vowed to protest by deleting their Facebook profiles and posting fake ones; others mocked Kosovo for treating Facebook like a country. “Tomorrow they will say that the Smurfs and hobbits have recognized them,” commented one reader on the online version of Blic, a Serbian daily newspaper. Another reader said Serbia should withdraw its ambassador from Facebook to protest.

Kosovars call the changes a matter of identity and economics. Kosovar businesses have been included on Facebook’s powerful advertising engine, helping companies target Kosovo’s small but growing consumer market.

Although Kosovo has sought to cast the Facebook changes as a diplomatic coup, Facebook characterized them as part of a gradual process and not politically motivated. The company said it found inconsistencies in how it designated locations and indicated that in future cases it would seek to align Facebook with international organizations such as the United Nations.

“Companies have clearly no role to play in the formal recognition of countries, as this is a matter for the international community to decide,” Linda Griffin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in an email statement. “To ensure that our services meet the needs of other users, locations that are suggested for check-ins or ad targeting are based on information we have received from third-party location databases and user-generated content.”

Gokhan Yucel, a lecturer in digital diplomacy at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, said recognition on social media helped a new country or aspiring nation to raise its profile, reinforce independence, reach its diaspora and generate investment.

In Spain, the regional governments in Catalonia and the Basque region, which have secessionist movements, have fought to use their own Internet domain names rather than the .es domain name associated with Spain.

In May, Israel’s Foreign Ministry warned Google that it was undermining the peace process with the Palestinians after Google changed the label on its home page in the occupied territories and on all its products, including its maps, from the “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine.” The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, lauded the move, through a spokesman, telling Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, that Google “put Palestine on the Internet map, making it a geographical reality.”

Mr. Selimi, the Kosovar deputy foreign minister, said he hoped Facebook’s global reach would bolster Kosovo’s image. The country has a teetering economy and widespread corruption and remains associated with the brutal ethnic wars of the 1990s. The government recently held Instagram boot camps in Pristina to train people how to use social media to upload images of Kosovo such as medieval churches, new highways or its wine country.

“As a prime minister of Kosovo, I found it difficult to accept that I have to declare myself as being from Serbia,” Mr. Thaci said in an interview by telephone and email. “Being listed by Facebook was like being recognized by a global economic superpower. It has enormous impact.”

 

Greece not to allow Macedonia to get date for EU talks (Focus News Agency, 13 December 2013)

There are no conditions for launching the EU accession negotiations with Macedonia. This is what Greek Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dimitris Kourkoulas, has said, as cited by Macedonian Sitel TV. Yesterday Kourkoulas made a statement on the issue saying, as follows: “Our position is that there are no conditions for starting the talks with Skopje.” The deputy minister recalled the position of the Greek government that Athens has made steps, which he considered “bold”, and that it was Skopje’s turn to “respond to these steps, so as to improve the neighborly relations”. This way, according to Kourkoulas, “the European and European-Atlantic perspectives for the neighboring country will be opened”.

 

Montenegro Sets New Date for Highway (BIRN, 13 December 2013)

After selecting a Chinese consortium to build it, Prime Minister says work on long-delayed highway should start in February.

Construction of a highway that will connect coastal and northern Montenegro to Serbia should start on February 25, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic told the Association of Foreign Investors on Wednesday.

This is the third time since 2008 that the government has set a precise date for a start to construction of the Bar-Boljari highway, which estimates say will cost more than 2 billion euro.

After six years of negotiations with various international companies and numerous announcements of a date for construction, in July the government selected China Communications Construction Company and China Road and Bridge Corporation as the winning bidders for the project.

Djukanovic said construction of the highway would be the most important project in the next year for Montenegro.

The Chinese companies “think everything will be signed on February 25, that this may be a day when we can promote the physical realization of the project”, Djukanovic said.

The highway will cross Montenegro from the Adriatic coast to the border with Serbia and includes difficult mountainous areas. It will be 169.2 kilometres long.

Priority will be given to the Smokovac-Uvce-Mateševo section, near Podgorica, which will cost nearly 810 million euro alone, due to the inaccessible terrain.

Analyst Ivana Gudovic believes the government deliberately delayed construction of the highway because of the cost. “Montenegro has a huge public debt and the government would gladly give up the idea of building a highway,” Gudovic told Balkan Insight on Thursday.

She said that it was difficult to believe that the highway would be built now, either. “There are no more aggressive campaigns about it, as there were in past years,” Gudovic noted.

The government first announced the building of the highway, as the largest capital project in the newly independent state, in 2008.

A year later it signed an agreement with a Croatian consortium led by Split-based construction firm, Konstruktor, worth 2.7 billion euro. The deal was called “the job of the century in the region”.

In October 2009, the prime ministers of Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia, Milo Djukanovic, Mirko Cvetkovic and Jadranka Kosor, respectively, signified the beginning of construction of the highway by cutting a red ribbon in a village near Podgorica. But since then not one usable mile of highway was built.

Government negotiations with Konstruktorom about providing banking guarantees dragged on for more than two years, and in late 2011 the contract was terminated.