Ivanov: Threats of sanctions are a signal to Pristina; for the EU, all options are on the table

Helena Ivanov, a research associate at the Henry Jackson Society, stated in an interview with Kosovo Online that there is no concrete plan for how the EU could sanction Pristina's behavior, and that the threats of new measures are a signal to the Kosovo administration to change its policy of taking unilateral actions.

"I think that, at this moment, there is still no concrete plan on how the current measures could be further intensified, increased, or perhaps even new measures introduced. At this moment, it is only a signal to Pristina that it must change its current approach and that it must return to the dialogue moderated by the European Union, which is trying to normalize relations between Belgrade and Pristina," Ivanov said.

As she added, the Quint countries have been clear regarding the opening of the main bridge on the Ibar River, and they are also aware that Albin Kurti's government is calculating the potential sanctions for unilateral actions.

"The Quint countries have been very clear that the opening of the Ibar is not something that should happen, and that when and in what moment it happens should depend primarily on the dialogue and the normalization process between Belgrade and Pristina. But what is currently happening is just part of the overall behavior of Kurti's government, which we have been seeing for several months, if not years, where unilateral actions are simply being taken. Pristina is probably hoping that the sanctions they would face either will not exist, or if they do, they will not be too severe, that they will not be too strongly felt by either the government there or the people living there. I think this is simply part of a pattern of behavior that we can now see from Kurti's government," Ivanov emphasized.

She is convinced that for the EU, "all options" of punitive measures are on the table: from economic sanctions to reconsidering visa liberalization.

"All options are on the table, and which option will eventually be implemented largely depends on what Kurti's government does, to what extent they will listen to what the Quint is saying, what official Brussels is saying. But we can probably expect, based on everything the EU has done so far, that the first wave will likely be economic sanctions, that is, sanctions that will be felt by Kosovo's economy, because in the end, they generally produce some positive results, not only in the case of Belgrade and Pristina, but in general – economic sanctions are something that is usually the first to be resorted to," Ivanov believes.

She adds that only if economic sanctions do not achieve the desired result, the EU might go a step further and reconsider visa liberalization.

"But I believe that the European Union does not want to escalate the situation in any way and hopes that the mere threat of sanctions and the refusal to lift the current measures in place will be enough to persuade Kurti to return to the negotiating table, to stop making unilateral decisions, and to stop complicating the normalization process between Belgrade and Pristina, which is inherently difficult because we are talking about two sides with mutually exclusive political goals, by making unilateral decisions that hinder the normal functioning of this already difficult normalization process," Ivanov explained.

She does not rule out the possibility that the EU is waiting for elections in Kosovo to get an "easier negotiator" than Albin Kurti, but she also warns that the problem in the normalization process is not Kurti but rather the EU's lack of acting as a strong actor capable of contributing to the actual normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

"In reality, more than ten years after the Brussels Agreement was signed, we still do not have the Community of Serb Municipalities. The provisions of the Brussels Agreement have still not been implemented. The European Union may be hoping for new elections, perhaps hoping that the government will change, that someone will come who they might find it easier to talk to than they currently do with Kurti, but this problem is older than Kurti. The normalization problem has been dragging on for too long, and the EU needs to take more seriously the fact that the parties are not fulfilling what they signed and said they would fulfill," Ivanov concluded.