Serbia is firmly on the path towards full membership in the EU, but wants to enter Europe as an integral whole - either that or nothing, says Tomislav Nikolic.

The Serbian president made this statement as he addressed the central ceremony marking Armed Forces Day and Victory Day in Zrenjanin, northern Serbia, on Monday.

European Commission’s decision to lift visa regime for Kosovo residents traveling to European Union has revealed once more the incompetence, amateurism, and maybe even bad intentions of Serbian negotiators in Brussels, Serbian National Forum (SNF) communicated.

President Tomislav Nikolic has said he will give a mandate to form a new government to SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic.
Speaking on Sunday, he added that if the Serbian Constitution is changed in the future, he knows there will be no change to the preamble that states Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia.

"I think I will not even have to hold consultations on a PM-designate as everything depends on whether someone has managed to secure 126 MPs who will vote for a government," he said, according to Tanjug.

Belgrade is not interested in the decisions of the constitutional court in Pristina, or it oblige us, nor we are interested, told RTS the Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Djuric. He points out that message of Serbia to all European officials is clear and that it does not accept unilateral changing of the agreement reached.

Lumir Abdixhiku says that intensity of the good news this week resembled the week of the declaration of the independence of Kosovo which proceeded with numerous recognitions. He considers that Kosovo needed this after almost eight year pause, after the fall of the intensity, failure at UNESCO, economic, social, and political suffocation.

Kosovo’s Interior Minister Skender Hyseni said he was optimistic that the European Parliament would very soon approve the recommendation of the European Commission to lift the visa regime for the people of Kosovo. According to Hyseni, the European Parliament is expected to vote on the recommendation in 10-12 weeks’ time “and we hope the citizens will be able to move freely by mid-summer or little bit after”.

War crimes remain an object of investigation even 17 years after the liberation of Kosovo. War crimes cases were previously under the UNMIK competencies and were later transferred as part of EULEX executive powers. But the EU rule of law mission since 2008 has not managed to solve 213 cases of this nature and is currently addressing 40 of them.

Serbia will take all legal measures to challenge the decision of European football's governing body UEFA to admit Kosovo as its member, leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Aleksandar Vucic said.

What happened in Budapest, when UEFA accepted Kosovo as its member, is in contravention of the Statutes. We will take legal action to challenge the decision, he told reporters at the SNS headquarters on Wednesday evening.

Ben Andoni writes that the decision of the European Commission to recommend liberalization of visas for Kosovo, was celebrated more by the politicians than the ordinary citizens. Just like in Albania, majority of them remain skeptical that liberalization of visas would change things much, even though, non-liberalization of visas in Kosovo was felt a bit differently, as a denied right that they used to have under another citizenship.

The European Commission proposal on visa-free regime for citizens of Kosovo represents a good step towards a free movement of people in the Schengen zone, considers Nenad Rasic.