Djurovic: The Quint demonstrated force in the CoE; rush due to a meeting in Brussels; a violation of the Rules of Procedure

The fact that Pristina's request for membership in the Council of Europe was accepted today at the extraordinary session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and forwarded to the Parliamentary Assembly for an opinion is a demonstration of the power of the Quint, with the leadership role of Germany, which mobilized all its diplomatic channels from Strasbourg through the CoE member countries, engaging their embassies, to the enormous pressure that was directed towards Reykjavík as the chairman, Aleksandra Djurovic, head of the Serbian Mission to the CoE, says for Kosovo online.

She sees two reasons why the application for membership in the Council of Europe, which Kosovo submitted in May of last year, entered the procedure just now - the first is that the session of the Parliamentary Assembly has started and the second is the upcoming high-level meeting between Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels, on May 2.

"One reason is the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). It has never happened in the history of the Council of Europe that an extraordinary meeting of the PACE is held in the week when the Parliamentary Assembly is in session that is a precedent. Another thing is the announced high-level conversation on May 2 between President Vucic and Kurti. Although we presented arguments that this particular meeting should be waited for, to see what the results of those talks will be, i.e. to finally present the draft of the Statute of the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities, we realized in informal discussions with representatives of certain countries, that this is precisely one of the reasons for the rush. That is, Kurti's condition that the procedure for Pristina's membership in the CoE should begin, in order to discuss the draft of the CSM Statute in Brussels," Djurovic explains.

She says that all the urgency surrounding Pristina's request for membership and the mobilization of all Quint countries, especially Germany, were with that goal in mind.

When convening an extraordinary meeting of the Committee of Minister of the Council of Europe, she added, they had even violated the Rules of Procedure because it had been expressly stated in one of the articles that every meeting had to be announced at the last meeting.

"At the last meeting, which was on April 19, not a single sentence announced the possibility of a new meeting, except for the regular one, on May 3. And this convening of the Committee of Minister of the Council of Europe meeting in a way that violates the rules of the Committee's Rule of Procedure of the ministers was also a demonstration of force. Many countries here in informal talks have expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that urgency was given over the violation of the Rule of Procedure just to satisfy someone's interests," Djurovic says.

The ambassador says that Serbian delegation strongly opposed the decision to forward Pristina's request to the PACE, which is why, at the request of Serbia, it was voted on at the meeting of the Committee of Ministers.
Representatives of 33 countries voted for this decision, seven were against (Serbia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, Cyprus, Spain, and Hungary), while five abstained (Greece, Slovakia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina). Armenia did not vote.

"None of the representatives of the 33 countries that voted in favor, except for the representatives of Albania, took the floor at today's meeting. It is obvious that the reason is that they had nothing positive to say in support of starting the whole procedure and the merits of Pristina for this to happen. Why none of those who were so interested in making this meeting happen and worked a lot behind the radar of the official meetings on it, had nothing to say at the official meeting," Djurovic wonders.

She explains that forwarding the request for membership from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to the Parliamentary Assembly is the first stage of joining the CoE, which is quite long. Now PACE needs to appoint rapporteurs in several committees. After that, if a two-thirds majority of PACE deputies gave a positive opinion on the request; the third stage comes, which is returning to the Committee of Ministers for the final decision.