Hopes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kosovo that the European Union would approve their visa-free access to the bloc by the summer have faded in recent days amid a raft of new concerns raised by the bloc’s biggest member states.
The Dutch government has agreed to set up a special court in The Hague to try alleged war crimes committed in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/netherlands-to-host-kosovo-war-crimes-court-1452910313
erbia and Kosovo, which fought a war in the late 1990s, took another step toward reconciliation Tuesday with a deal that, among other things, will allow Kosovars to have their own country code. The agreement, brokered by European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, also grants more rights to Serb communities living in the north of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia.
The small Balkan country of Macedonia is turning into an unexpected stage for tension between Moscow and the West.
A year and a half after antigovernment protests broke out in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, similar scenes are playing out on the streets of Skopje, Macedonia: Tens of thousands of protesters have swarmed the city’s center in recent weeks, angered over excerpts from illegal wiretaps that activists say expose corruption and a gross abuse of power in Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s government.
The European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the head of the United Nations called for calm in Macedonia after weekend events that left eight police and 14 civilians dead.
The government said over the weekend that the deaths occurred in an “antiterrorist operation” that was launched against one of the “most dangerous terrorist groups in the Balkans.”
The European Union’s law-and-order mission in Kosovo didn’t attempt to cover up allegations of corruption in its own ranks, but its handling of the accusations has damaged the credibility of the bloc’s largest civilian operation outside the EU, according to an expert report.
GERMERING, Germany— Valmir Sahiti, 25 years old, has spent the last two weeks living in a nursing home in the long-shot hope of a new life.
Mr. Sahiti, an asylum-seeker from Kosovo, is staying with five relatives in a makeshift refugee center set up on several turquoise-carpeted empty floors of the home. He says he is aware the German authorities may soon send him back, but he insists the chance to live in Germany is worth the attempt.
“We love Germany,” Mr. Sahiti, a Kosovar Albanian, says. “Albanians have a saying: If God wants it, he will do it.”
Negotiations Are Key to Serbia and Kosovo’s Efforts to Advance on Path Toward European Union Membership
BRUSSELS—High-level reconciliation talks between Serbia and Kosovo resumed Monday after close to a year, as the two prime ministers met with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Brussels.
The resumption of talks for the first time since March 2014 follows elections last year in both Serbia and Kosovo. It comes as both governments face rising political pressures.
Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, must stay directly involved in talks between Kosovo and Serbia if the dialogue is to succeed, Hashim Thaci, the country’s foreign minister, said Thursday.
To lock in the reconciliation between the two former foes, Kosovo and Serbia should also start work on a second agreement in the new year, Mr. Thaci said in a sit-down with The Wall Street Journal in Brussels. Mr. Thaci, who was Kosovo’s prime minister for seven years until earlier this month, is still widely considered the country’s most powerful politician.
The European Union is seeking to advance two key initiatives in the Balkans in the next couple of months, senior officials said Monday.
EU enlargement chief Johannes Hahn said he now hopes for a political breakthrough in Bosnia by early February, which could reopen the country’s path toward eventual EU membership. Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she is working to relaunch reconciliation talks in January between Serbia and Kosovo at prime ministerial level.