The current situation in the European Union does not allow enlargement under the satisfactory condition, Nathalie Loiseau, French Minister for European Affairs said ahead of her visit to Belgrade, the Beta news agency reported on Monday.
She said the May election would be crucial for the future of the EU.
Commenting on Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic statement that the demarcation with Pristina was Belgrade's official idea, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zaharova said Moscow had not changed its policy towards Kosovo, the Beta news agency reported on Wednesday.
“Our position hasn't changed, “ she said, without elaborating.
Donald Trump, the US President, told Zoran Zaev, North Macedonia's Prime Minister, that his deal with Greece on the country’s new name was the greatest achievement in the Balkans since the 1995 Dayton Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Beta news agency reported.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission (EC), said in Brussels on Wednesday that there was a high risk of the restoration of the 1990s if the Western Balkans countries did not have a perspective of joining the European Union, the FoNet news agency reported.
Speaking after talks with the Slovenian President Borut Pahor, Juncker said the Western Balkans’ chances of joining the bloc had to be real, adding he believed “it was the question of war or peace.”
Serbia will never stop insisting on the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities (CSM), a part of the Brussels Agreement signed in 2013, a Government official said on Tuesday, N1 reported.
Marko Djuric, the head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Belgrade’s official name for its former province, said he was grateful to local Serbs, loyal to Belgrade, for not trying to form the CSM on their own.
Demarcation will be Serbia’s official proposal to resolve the Kosovo issue, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Tuesday.
Dacic said that the exact demarcation line has not been defined yet even though the demarcation idea is in play.
Members and supporters of the nationalist Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the signatories to the Appeal for Defence of Kosovo and Metohija, Belgrade’s official name for its former province, organised a protest on Monday called “Stop to Treason!” “Kosovo is Serbia,” N1 reported.
DSS does not take part in the protests in Belgrade, but the organisers said their rally was not against them, but that they only added the issue of Kosovo because the Saturdays’ demonstration did not deal with it.
A bi-partisan US Congress delegation has demanded the arrest of former senior Serbian police officer Goran Radosavljevic aka Guri over the killing of three Kosovo Albanian US citizens in 1999, Belgrade daily Blic said on Monday.
The delegation met with President Aleksandar Vucic during last week’s security conference in Munich to demand Radosavljevic’s arrest and extradition.
Great powers always have plan B, and unless the Belgrade and Pristina agreements come to an end, all leads towards the outbreak of localized armed conflicts in Kosovo, assesses Dusan Janjic from the Forum for Ethnic Relations, visiting regional broadcaster TV N1.
Janjic assesses that the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina is in a deadlock, and the position means that you can no longer take any move and that you must play something new, "what the Americans would say, something creative."
Billboards saying ‘11 years of occupation 17.2.2008-17.2.2019.’ appeared in the northern part of the divided town of Mitrovica, on the day when Pristina authorities are marking 11th years after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.
The northern part of the town is where the Serbs create a majority and whose local authorities are loyal to Belgrade.
The billboards painted in black also show two white-coloured hands in handcuffs.