Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Monday that he was confident that Serbia would open the first chapters in its EU accession negotiations before the end of the current year.

“I hope and expect that it will happen in September, but I have still not lost hope that we can get the first chapters even earlier. These could be Chapters 23 and 24, concerning the rule of law, 32, which concerns financial control, and Serbia-specific 35 (on Kosovo)," Vucic said for Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) after a ‘Friends of Serbia’ meeting in Brussels.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon on his quarterly report on Kosovo which will be reviews on 26 May, has welcomed the continuation of the Pristina – Belgrade dialogue and the reaching of agreement on judiciary, and stressed that one of the remaining crucial issues is the establishment of the Association/Community of Serb-majority municipalities.

Women politicians from Serbia refused to attend the Regional Women Conference organized by the UN Women, which was held on Wednesday in Mitrovica South. The refusal came after the organizer of the event organized the round-table to take place in Mitrovica South and not in Mitrovica North. Women parliamentarians from Serbia and Kosovo as well as representatives of northern municipalities were supposed to discuss the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, particularly the challenges that women from northern Kosovo face.

Berlin has defined requests in order to approve next step until the end of the year in Serbia’s integration. Certain shift is needed in the area of energy and creation of the Association/Community of Serb municipalities.

Official Berlin is ready to unblock the negotiations between Serbia and the EU and to give green light in December for the opening first chapters, learned Novosti.

The head of the negotiating team for negotiations on Serbia's accession to the EU, Tanja Miscevic said today that between Belgrade and Pristina, there is no agreement on the status of Community/Association of Serbian municipalities in Kosovo and added that this dialogue affects the European integration of our country.

Director of the Serbian government's Office for Kosovo-Metohija Marko Djuric said after the talks with Pristina's delegation in Brussels that no agreement on energy was reached, as Pristina refused to meet the obligations assumed earlier.

"Pristina did not accept for the community of Serb municipalities and the Electric Power Industry of Serbia to establish a new company that would deal with distribution of electricity in the north of Kosovo-Metohija and they bear the responsibility for not having much success today," he told the press in Brussels on Monday.

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."

Kosovo’s Minister without portfolio, Edita Tahiri, said on Friday that as of last year, Serbia is blocked because it’s not respecting the agreements reached with Kosovo. She said that any agreement made with Serbia was signed on the principle of reciprocity. But, according to her, there are delays on the implementation of agreements because of the history between Kosovo and Serbia.  "Sometimes it is not good to mention this but I say that Serbia committed genocide in Kosovo,” Tahiri said.

Only four out of 16 agreements reached between Pristina and Belgrade in Brussels have been fully implemented, says a report coauthored by BIRN Kosovo, the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) from Serbia, and Internews Kosova. The report, which will be published later today, calls on the two sides and on the European Union to set priorities of the normalization of relations process as most of the agreements reached so far have not been implemented.

At the latest Belgrade-Pristina talks in Brussels, Kosovo agreed not to unilaterally privatize companies in the mainly Serbian north without seeking the consent of the community.

Aleksandar Vucic and Isa Mustafa, the Serbian and Kosovo Prime Ministers, met on Tuesday in Brussels for another round of EU-mediated talks and agreed to halt fresh privatisations of companies in the Serb-run north of Kosovo.