Brnabic: CSM must comply with the Brussels Agreement; I don't know what "Friedrich Ebert" was doing

The Community of Serb-majority Municipalities had to be in accordance with the Brussels Agreement, the management team had to work on it in accordance with the powers and responsibilities defined by the agreement from 2015, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic pointed out today.

Brnabic, in Pozega, after visiting the business plant, told reporters in a statement that she expected that when the CSM was established, it would be in accordance with the Brussels Agreement.

Asked about the proposal for the CSM statute prepared by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, she said that she had not read or seen that document.

"But it is not clear to me why that Foundation is working on the establishment of the CSM, because it is completely clear who should work on it, and that is the management team in accordance with the powers and responsibilities defined by the agreement from 2015. There are no unknowns. There are powers and authorities, of which there are 22. Thus, there is a management team that exists and knows how to form it, and it should work on the CSM,” the Prime Minister underlined.

She thanked the German foundation for the help, and expressed the hope that it had been well-intentioned, but reiterated that the powers and responsibilities of the CSM were known because they were defined by the 2015 agreement.

"The management team was formed in 2018. It started working on the statute. For that, in 2018, Kosovo was recognized in the progress report of the European Commission. Let's continue on the path that was defined in 2015 and 2018 and let those people work on the CSM who should do so in accordance with the authorizations based on the agreement from 2015", Brnabic underlined.

When asked what she had expected from today's meeting at the US Embassy in Pristina, as well as what the US envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, had promised her, she said that at one of the meetings, she had been clearly told that the US would work immediately at the beginning of 2023 and that there were January and February, for the formation of the CSM.

"I have no expectations from today's meeting because it is not a meeting about which we were consulted. I expect that the CSM is in line exclusively with the Brussels Agreement; with what was defined in 2013, when it was signed, and in 2015 when the competencies of the CSM were defined by the agreement; to be consistent with what the management team says the CSM should mean - nothing more, nothing less than that," she said.

She appealed not to make a mockery of the Brussels Agreement and the agreement from 2015, to create something called the CSM or whatever, without the defined powers.

"It is known what the powers are and what the CSM should be, no more and no less than that. In that sense, I have no expectations that it should be in accordance with the Kosovo constitution, or whatever they call that document that they defined themselves. First, because the international agreement is above that paper they are referring to, and second because if something were in accordance with the Kosovo constitution, there would be no need for negotiations and agreements under the auspices of the EU. The CSM must be in accordance with the Brussels Agreement. And third because the authorities in Pristina have shown several times in the past years that they do not respect their own constitution when it suits them. When they set out to form the so-called Kosovo Security Forces, they worked without any agreement and approval of the Serbs in Kosovo, which is explicitly against the constitution they refer to. When they should have returned the property to the monastery in Decani, and the constitutional court said that they should, in such cases they did not respect their so-called constitution," Brnabic concluded.