Markovic: By complaining about Lajcak, Pristina is desperately trying to avoid its obligations

Political scientist Igor Markovic from the NGO "Aktiv" assessed for Kosovo Online that the verbal note that Kosovo had sent to the EU members in which it complained about the European Envoy for Dialogue Miroslav Lajcak was a marketing move by Pristina in order to, as he said, buy time and postpone the obligation to implement the reached agreement.

"This is actually not the first time that representatives of Pristina have complained about the fact that Miroslav Lajcak is the mediator in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. The previous argument was that Miroslav Lajcak was a representative of a country that did not recognize Kosovo, and that was used for a long time to cancel the implementation of certain agreements that were signed in the process of normalizing relations," Markovic says.

He sees the sending of a verbal note to the representatives of the EU member states in which they give their views on the last round of dialogue and accuse Lajcak of being "on Serbia's side" in the negotiation process, "through the prism of a desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that the obligations that were taken from Brussels and of the Ohrid Agreement were not implemented by Pristina".

"This marketing move was actually carried out to buy time. It is clear that Brussels is putting a lot of pressure on Pristina when it comes to the formation of the CSM, and that was one of the key items that Brussels insisted on being implemented. It turned out that once more this process mediated by Brussels was unsuccessful, precisely because of the fact that Pristina did not want to discuss the implementation of the agreement on the CSM at all," Markovic says.

He adds that it is interesting that in that verbal note, which was written in English, the term "Kosova" is persistently used, which, he says, is incorrect in the English language and is against diplomatic rules.

"On the other hand, the Ohrid Agreement is mentioned in the verbal note, which is in English, in the Albanian name, so 'Oher', instead of Ohrid. This shows a kind of classic frivolity and I assume haste when writing this kind of document, which in the last resort actually represents the true picture of the absence of Pristina's strategy, when it comes to the continuation of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina," Markovic points out.

He believes that in the coming period, Brussels will make a decision on new measures for Kosovo, which could go in the direction of limiting Pristina's access to certain EU budget funds, which, he says, has already happened once.

"We see that the USA is significantly reducing its investments, I assume that this will also be the case with the EU, but it is questionable whether such measures will have practical consequences, bearing in mind how Albin Kurti is currently behaving when we talk about the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina," Markovic says.