Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Thursday that the EU should say why no negotiating chapters in Serbia's membership negotiations have yet been opened.

Ahead of his meeting with visiting EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, Vucic said they will discuss "what Serbia has done so far," and added he "noticed everything is a matter of the dialogue with Pristina."

The prime minister stressed that he and Hahn will discuss "the concrete reasons why chapters have not been opened," and added this was "certainly not because of the Brussels agreement":

Interview with Tomislav Nikolic, President of Serbia

Is Kosovo issue considered as an internal affair of Serbia or as regional, taking into consideration the Brussels agreement?

Blerim Shala, former deputy leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo and current coordinator in the dialogue between Pristina and e Belgrade,  writes that states and societies, just as individuals and families, can reach a situation when they need an event to regain their dignity, and self-confidence, an event which could be later used as a source to move forward, and mobilize political and social power to improve themselves.

In an interview published by Politika, European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, Johannes Hahn said that he would like to see opening of the first chapters soon and that he is in Belgrade to help Serbia to finish all that needed to be done.

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic hopes that EU countries will recognize the efforts Serbia is investing in the dialogue with Pristina.

He made this statement in Belgrade on Wednesday as he received Gianni Pittella, president of the group of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (EP).

According to the Serbian government, the prime minister "also expressed the hope that EU countries would also recognize other political and economic reform processes and back Serbia's progress on its EU path by opening negotiating chapters."

Asked to comment the release of website Koha.net, Spokesperson of EU High Representative Maja Kocijancic said: “The EU's position is very clear. The dialogue which EU is facilitating between Belgrade and Pristina is about normalisation of relations. The issue of recognition is for the member states. This was clearly explained to the media by the High Representative during her visit to Pristina and Belgrade.”

Kosovo Serbs hope that President Tomislav Nikolic’s new ‘Kosovo platform’ will finally address the longstanding issue of Serbs who were abducted or went missing during and after the war.

The Association of Missing and Kidnapped Kosovo Serbs said on Monday that Nikolic’s so-called ‘Kosovo platform’ was their “last hope” of finding out what happened to more than 1,000 Kosovo Serbs who went missing during and after the 1999 war.

Augustin Palokaj, Brussels based correspondent of this daily, considers that there is more attentiveness this time in continental Europe about the upcoming elections in the Great Britain than ever before. This, due to the promise of the British Conservative Party for a referendum on UK’s membership at the European Union, which in theory means that this country might leave the EU. Despite the frequent irritation that they cause, writes Palokaj, no one in Europe would want them to leave the EU.

Serbia's Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic will take part in a Friends of Serbia meeting in Brussels on May 18, the Serbian government office for media relations said on Thursday.

All the foreign ministers from EU countries will be at the meeting, and Vucic was invited by Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz and his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni.

The ambassadors of Austria and Italy, Johannes Aigner and Giuseppe Manzi, presented Vucic with the invitation and said that the meeting was an expression of their countries' support for Serbia's faster EU integration.

If they want to join the EU, Belgrade and Pristina will have an obligation to sign another agreement that will allow the admission of Kosovo to the United Nations.

The full membership of Kosovo in the UN will enable entry into other international organizations such as the OSCE, Council of Europe, and finally, the European Union; say Western diplomatic sources for Blic explaining what brings the future agreement, the so-called Brussels 2, which has been recently debated in public.