17 Sep 14

If Victor Ponta wins the presidential poll in Romania, Kosovo will be waiting to see if he acts on his pledge to rethink Romania’s opposition to Kosovo’s independence.
Nektar Zogjani
BIRN
Pristina

Victor Ponta said he would rethink Romania’s opposition to Kosovo’s independence | Photo by: Wikimedia Commons / anti.usl

Refusal to recognise Kosovo’s independence by five EU member states is often singled out as one of the main obstacles slowing Kosovo’s European and Atlantic integration process.

More than six years since it unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, Kosovo is still not a member of such important organizations international organizations as the UN, the EU and NATO.

The five EU states that have refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence from Serbia - Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Slovakia and Romania – have so far maintained a united front on the issue.

Most oppose recognizing Kosovo’s secession because they have secession concerns of their own - Romania and Slovakia with their Hungarian minorities, and Spain with its restive Catalan and Basque communities.

However, the upcoming presidential elections in Romania, scheduled for November this year, may produce good news for the “Young Europeans.”

Romania’s incumbent President, Traian Basescu, who was not in favour of recognising Kosovo as a state, will shortly end his second consecutive term of office and, by law, may not run for a third.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, who has stated that he favours recognizing Kosovo, is the candidate with the highest chances of winning the upcoming presidential election.

When the European Parliament last year adopted a resolution urging the EU member states that have not recognized Kosovo to do so, Prime Minister Ponta notably stated that Romania was bound in the end to go along with the European family on the Kosovo issue.

“The positions of the three institutions [in Romania] should be coordinated, and although I am rather in favour of a rapid process of recognition, the President is more cautious than me, while former foreign ministers also have their views,” Ponta was quoted as saying.

Ponta’s statement should be taken with caution, as it was made mainly in opposition to President Basescu’s stated position on the issue. Ponta and Basescu have a long history of public disagreements, which culminated in a referendum on the impeachment of the President in July 2012.

Meanwhile, a recent poll suggested that Ponta will win about 46 per cent of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on November 2, well ahead of the likely runner up, the head of the opposition National Liberal Party, Klaus Iohannis. He is tipped to come second with around 24 per cent.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and so far has been recognized by 108 of the 193 members of the UN. The year 2014 has seen four more additions to the list, Tonga, Lesotho, Togo and the Solomon Islands, the latter in August this year.

But recognition by Romania would be a far important development than recognition by small, far-off countries in Africa and the Pacific, signaling a collapse in the ranks of the five EU refuseniks.

Kosovo’s Foreign Ministry would certainly welcome a breakthrough on that key European front. It has done its utmost to convince the five EU member countries to recognize what it calls the new reality of Kosovo’s statehood.

“Minister Hoxhaj has continuously had meetings with senior Romanian state officials, the latest one being in June 2014,” Bashmir Xhemaj, an advisor to Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj, told Balkan Insight.

“Lobbying the five EU member states has been a priority for the Minister,” Xhemaj added.

International relations experts in Kosovo welcome the apparent flexibility of Ponta on the issue, saying that possible recognition by Romania would have an affect on the other EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo.

“Recognition by this state would have a positive effect. The main one would be its influence on the other EU countries that still do not recognize our state,” Gent Gjikolli, an international relation expert from the KIPRED think tank in Kosovo, said.

“If Romania recognizes Kosovo, Kosovo would have to convince only three more countries to become part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme,” Gjikolli added, referring to Greece, Spain and Slovakia. The PfP programme is the first step towards membership of the Atlantic alliance.

Kosovo Foreign Ministry officials have often stated that the number of recognitions needs to increase if Kosovo I to press its case to be allowed to join key international organizations and to get “its deserved place among the free nations of the world,” as Kosovo’s outgoing Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, stated in a UN Security Council session on March 2013.