Brussels agreement stopped: Who suffers more damage - Pristina due to the exit of the Serbs from the institutions or the Serbs due to the CSM?

Close to the tenth anniversary since it was signed, the Brussels Agreement is practically stopped today. The Community of Serb-majority Municipalities has not been formed, nor are there any Serbs in the Kosovo institutions. If everything were put together on a political scale what would it show: who suffers more damage - Pristina because the Serbs left the institutions or the Serbs because Pristina did not form the CSM?

Director of ISAC fund research, Igor Novakovic, tells Kosovo Online that no one is currently winning.

"This kind of situation is really not good and it is necessary to reach the state that is foreseen by the Brussels Agreement. Kosovo can certainly function without the Serbs in the institutions, but the question is what is wanted? It is also a question of international reputation and consistency because the Constitution and laws of Kosovo are based on a multi-ethnic basis. The very fact that, for example, you don't have the Serbs in the police in the municipalities in the north shows that the system is not functioning as intended. It, therefore, sends certain negative messages. For any type of incident, the Serbian policemen are not responsible, but all responsibility falls on Pristina," Novakovic says.

He adds that even if Pristina replaces the Serbian representatives with someone else in the elections in April, even though they might have legality, they will not have legitimacy and as such will harm the reputation of the authorities in Pristina.

When it comes to the CSM, Novakovic believes that the absence of this community harms Pristina as well.

"The CSM is also in the interest of Pristina, although it is not interpreted that way there. And Pristina suffers from not having the CSM because there is a good part of unresolved issues from which it would benefit if there was the CSM. A chaos has been created of an institution that is quite weak in all its competencies," our interlocutor believes.

Brussels agreement or officially - The first agreement on the principles governing the normalization of relations, let's remind you, was signed on April 19, 2013. The Prime Ministers of Serbia and Kosovo at the time, Ivica Dacic and Hashim Thaci put their initials on it, under the auspices of High EU Commissioner Catherine Ashton. The first article of the agreement reads: "There will be an Association/Community of municipalities where Serbs make up the majority population in Kosovo. Membership will be open to any other municipality provided that the members agree."

In the following five articles, it is specified, among other things, that the CSM will have full supervision over the areas of economic development, education, health, urban planning, and rural development. The following part talks about the integration of the police in the north into the framework of the Kosovo Police, the integration of the judiciary, as well as the organization of local elections in the northern municipalities in accordance with the Kosovo law.

Assessing which side suffers more damage since the Brussels Agreement remains only letters on paper, analyst Dejan Vuk Stankovic tells Kosovo Online that the absence of the CSM is a key disadvantage for the survival of the Serbs in Kosovo, while Pristina has no problem with the fact that the Serbs are not in the institutions of the system.

"Pristina does not want the Serbs in the institutions of Kosovo or in Kosovo; this is how they have been behaving all these years. Pristina is extremely comfortable concerning the CSM because the mediators in the dialogue do not sanction it for undiplomatic and unfair behavior. I do not think that they have a problem with the fact that the Serbs are not in the institutions. They are doing their best to reduce the number of Serbs in Kosovo, and they do not suffer because there are no sanctions for them. On the other hand, there is continuous pressure on Serbia, and leaving the institutions is a kind of resistance and giving up the fact that only one side cooperates while the others don't pay attention to it," Stankovic says.

Although the officials from Pristina conspicuously do not miss the opportunity to present Kosovo in international forums as the largest democracy that cares about the rights of minorities, Stankovic says that the words lost their meaning a long time ago and that they have nothing more than incidental propaganda value.

"They communicate with phrases that are desirable in diplomatic speech, there is no serious effort to improve the position of the Serbs. If there were, they would not have fortified the five ROSU bases in the north of Kosovo, they would have formed the CSM a long time ago, and they would never have burned Serbian goods that are used in Kosovo, as was the case a few years ago; there would not have been such provocations; there would have been no beating of Serbian boys; no shooting and imprisonment of people expressing their views, as was the case with Mr. Todosijevic. All of this would not have happened if the Albanians wanted a kind of coexistence in a multi-ethnic society. They simply do not want that. They want a mono-ethnic society and for the Serbs to be absolutely politically impotent in relation to the situation in Kosovo, to expel them if possible or to completely marginalize them and turn them into a minority that is only an insignificant statistical category," Stankovic concludes.

He also says that he is not optimistic about the formation of the CSM, about solving practical challenges related to future elections in Kosovo, or about the future of the European plan. As he notes, a different atmosphere and a higher level of trust and mutual respect must be created for negotiations.