Former EU envoy for Kosovo and one-time international high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Wolfgang Petritsch warned in Tirana Wednesday that missing the present opportunity to solve the Kosovo issue could lead to a frozen conflict in Europe.

It is very important to continue the EU-facilitated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and find a solution because the circumstances in the EU will continue to change - and not for the better, he said at a conference "Serbs and Albanians - Which Way Further?" organised by Tanjug in collaboration with the Albanian news agency ATA.

He also warns that regional experience has shown that imposed solutions were not good.

"The elections for the European Parliament next year will bring even more extremists from Western and Central Europe into the parliament. The next European Commission will be compiled differently from the current one, and I am afraid that if the opportunity to solve the Kosovo problem is not used now, the future Commission will try to avoid this question," he said.

"If Federica Mogherini does not succeed, then I do not believe her successor will raise this issue, and there is a danger that this problem will become a frozen conflict in the middle of Europe," he said.

At the same time, Petritsch assessed that the initiative of Zoran Zaev and Alexis Tsipras, as well as Aleksandar Vucic and Hashim Thaci, for the first time, illustrate how local politics is trying to solve the local problem, which he supports.

He also said that from the experience in the region he knows that the imposed solutions are not good.

"In BiH, we had an imposed solution, a lot of billions were invested in reconstruction, which succeeded, but there is no sustainable solution. It is easier to solve the problem of Kosovo and the name of Macedonia, because there are politicians who are ready for a compromise, which is a prerequisite for solution" explained Petritsch.