Augustin Palokaj writes in a column for the paper that people in Kosovo are becoming increasingly agitated when they hear leaders promising something will happen ‘very soon’. They have been hearing the term used for many years now with regards to the visa liberalization and to European integrations. Most recently, they heard the notion being applied to the removal of the new barricade in Mitrovica. The statement that the barricade will very soon be removed was made by Deputy Prime Minister Edita Tahiri who, Palokaj says, is known for saying that the footnote agreed to be used next to Kosovo’s name would very soon ‘melt like a snowflake in the sun’. “Several summers have since then gone by and the footnote has become integrative part of the name of Kosovo which prevents it from being treated as a normal country”, he writes.

It seems highly unlikely that Tahiri and ‘her direct contacts in Brussels’ will be able to remove the barricade very soon and while Tahiri’s contacts will soon continue their careers elsewhere, partition of Mitrovica will continue, it will become legitimate and take on a new form “with less barbwire, less rocks and gravel, and more flowers, trees and concrete”.

The newest barricade in Mitrovica serves only to embellish the city’s division and shows that the Brussels’ dialogue was not as successful in normalizing the situation in the north, writes Palokaj adding however that this is not the time to analyse who won what from the dialogue when it is enough to recall that citizens of Serbia already travel freely to EU while the country has been given the EU candidate status and even has opened accession negotiations. At the same time, Kosovo is left with the “Peace Park” constructed on a bridge which, though embellished, doesn’t serve to connect the city but to divide it.