French daily newspaper Le Monde has published two articles on the possible exchange of territories between Belgrade and Pristina, as well as a Kosovo map showing their interpretation on what the “border change“ would look like.

Le Monde also pointed out that the “ethnic mosaic, key infrastructure and cultural objects are obstacles to the project of redefining the borders“.

The Parisian daily, in the first article, underlines that “the exchange of territories based on pure ethnic criteria is worrisome“ and that “ethics and pragmatism are colliding in the debate on the possible border change between the two sides“.

The newspaper also published an explanation of French geographer Michel Foucher, who says “there is no need to mix the immunity and the inviolability of the borders“.

“The borders are immune from the point of view of international law, that is, they cannot be questioned by force, but they are not inviolable: they can be changed if both sides reach an agreement,“ Foucher says.

This principle, which was recognized in 1975 at the Helsinki Conference of the USSR and Westerners, and ceremonially presented in 1990 by the Charter of Paris, enabled German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Le Monde underlined.

“Between 1989 and 1992, 22 new borders were established, 11,149 kilometers long, in Europe – including Ukraine and Belarus,“ Michel Foucher estimated.

The Paris newspaper notes that, however, in the case of territorial exchanges between Belgrade and Pristina, new boundaries would be drawn, for the first time, on a purely ethnic basis, and not on the former administrative lines of the constituent republics or autonomous regions of the former Yugoslavia.

This novelty, as the analysis notes, has awakened caution in most observers in the region where ethnic issues remain very much alive.

In the second article, Le Monde writes that the re-establishment of the borders in the Western Balkans has been presented as a stability solution after 20 years of frozen conflicts, but it also emphasizes that residents of relevant zones are afraid of another “ethnic cleansing“.

The Parisian daily also tweeted a map of Kosovo, which reads: “Between Kosovo and Serbia, ethnic mosaic, key infrastructures and cultural objects are obstacles to the project of redefining the borders.“

See at: https://kossev.info/le-monde-the-exchange-of-territories-between-bg-and-pr-a-problematic-solution/