Why do the education and health institutions of the Serbs in Kosovo bother Pristina?

That the Serbian "parallel structures" in Kosovo should be abolished is one of the topics that Pristina officials point their finger at every day, and what is "parallel" from their perspective are the Serbian health and educational institutions. According to the interviewees of Kosovo Online, the abolition of schools and health centers that work according to the Serbian system would bring with it the danger of the Serbs emigrating from Kosovo, while Pristina would not have the organizational or financial capacity to provide an alternative for these systems.

Health and education are areas that, according to the First Brussels Agreement from 2013, should be within the jurisdiction of the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities. Namely, in that agreement, it is said that the CSM would have "full supervision" over them. However, Kosovo officials insist that the CSM will not have any executive powers.

Milica Rakic Andric from the non-governmental organization New Social Initiative tells Kosovo Online that numerous surveys have shown that education and healthcare are red lines for the Serbian community.

"They were ready to 'swallow' the integration of the police and the judiciary, but what is of key importance to them are these two areas, as well as the social benefits system. The Serbian health system is very different from the Kosovo one, which resembles the American model because there you have private insurance and you don't have the possibility of universal health insurance, and the quality of services, is not at a good level," Rakic Andric said.

She indicates that among the key things that the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities should be able to do is to manage the Health Insurance Fund, which would somehow remain linked to the Republic Health Insurance Fund in Serbia, so that people who are beneficiaries of that CSM fund could they have the same health card that is used in the health system in Serbia. That way, she says, they would be sure that whenever they have an illness, they can be treated in Serbia.

As for the education system, Rakic Andric says that it is organized differently in Kosovo because elementary school lasts nine years and secondary school three.

"It would have to be ensured that this system in Serbian communities remains as it is - eight years of elementary school and four years of secondary school so that children from Kosovo who want to, would have the opportunity to continue their education in Serbia unhindered. Also, the quotas according to which departments are formed are different. If the Kosovo quotas were applied to the Serbian education system in Kosovo, a large number of elementary schools would simply be closed, first of all those in rural areas where there are few students, and children cannot be allowed to travel tens of kilometers to get an education," Rakic Andric says.

She also states that when it comes to the system of social benefits, the criteria used to decide whether someone is entitled to social benefits differ and that it could happen that someone who is entitled under the Serbian system does not have it according to the Kosovo system.

"These are things that must be taken care of. If the CSM does not respond to all the needs of the Serbian community in Kosovo, then it will not even exist in Kosovo, people will move out," Rakic Andric says.

She also states that the Serbian education and health system is also used by other minority communities – Gorani people in Dragash, Roma people in Gracanica, Gjilan, and South Mitrovica, Bosniaks in the north, and that it is not a system that serves only the Serbian community in Kosovo but also other communities and that it happens that services are also provided to Albanians in the Serbian health system.

"This is a very sensitive issue that should be approached with great seriousness in order to avoid major disturbances and displacement of people. Also, I do not think that the Kosovo system would be able to integrate health and education because it costs a lot, and this issue is not considered enough by the Kosovo public. It is difficult to determine how much money for these areas comes to Kosovo from Serbia, but the point is that it is not only money for salaries that Kosovo should provide when integration takes place. That money that comes from Serbia is spent in Kosovo, and if it wasn't there it would be a huge economic blow for such a small area as Kosovo. This is not being talked about, and the claim that the CSM will make Kosovo dysfunctional is being made, without realizing that Kosovo is even now dysfunctional. If you have ten municipalities within your territory where completely different system rules and for which budget you are not responsible, that probably means that Kosovo is not functional even now," Rakic Andric says.

Political analyst Ljubomir Stanojkovic believes that there are no more serious reasons why organizing healthcare and education for the Serbs by the Serbian community itself would be a problem for the Pristina authorities.

"Since the arrival of the international forces in these two areas, there has been no influence other than Serbian for several reasons. However, two are key - the language barrier and the dangerous security situation in the cities, where high schools and hospitals are located. Time passed, the Kosovo authorities provided financial assistance to employees and communal expenses in health and education to a lesser extent, but they were not ready to provide infrastructural conditions. It somehow suited everyone. Now a more serious approach to the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina has begun, so we have the Brussels Agreements from 2013 and 2015, within which the formation of the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities was agreed, which also includes jurisdiction over the education and health care of the Serbs, and the Brussels Agreement was also verified by the Kosovo Assembly," Stanojkovic says.

However, he notes, members of the Self-Determination Movement led by Albin Kurti did not agree with this decision.

"In order to delay this as much as possible or to wait for a better time, a negative campaign was launched in Pristina against the CSM, primarily in the sense that it is the third level of government in contradiction to the Constitution and that it is the new Republika Srpska in the Balkans. Everyone joined this campaign, even those who voted for the verification of the Brussels Agreement, that is, for the formation of the CSM, and being against the CSM automatically means being against the fact that the education and health system of the Serbian community is organized by the Serbs themselves," Stanojkovic says.

He adds that the extent to which the Serbian education and health system in Kosovo hinders and harms Kosovo society is not emphasized too much by Kosovo politicians, because that would probably imply an alternative, which there is none.

"In my opinion, besides, of course, in the legal and political sense it represents the problem of rounding off Kosovo's statehood, the main problem against the Serbs organizing their own education and healthcare is the fact that the Brussels agreement foresees direct financing of these activities by Belgrade. It is because, by all accounts, it can represent certain political problems for Kosovo. I don't see any stronger reason for the opposition of the Kosovo authorities to the Serbian community managing education and health care on its own, except that Belgrade is directly involved in this with its funding. Also, when these areas are in the Serbian system, greater opportunities are provided for the unity of the Serbs in Kosovo, and the more unified the Serbs are, the stronger they are, and therefore more difficult to control," Stanojkovic says.

Mazllum Baraliu, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Pristina, assesses for Kosovo Online that nobody in Pristina is bothered by the educational and health institutions of the Serbs in Kosovo, but by some other things.

"There are six items from the Brussels Agreement from 2013, which give powers to the Serbs, not only in the field of health and education. Also, according to the current laws of Kosovo, Serb-majority municipalities have asymmetric responsibilities in relation to other municipalities with an Albanian majority and other communities. In healthcare, you have the right to tertiary health care in North Mitrovica, and there is also a University to which North Mitrovica has the right, as it is written in the Law on Higher Education," Baraliu says.