Mitic: ICG recommendations are preparing the ground, but its role is no longer the same

In its autumn report on Kosovo, the International Crisis Group (ICG) offered recommendations on how the European Union and its member states could support dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. Aleksandar Mitic, senior research fellow at the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, said that ICG’s recommendations in the past were meant to prepare the ground and place certain issues on the agenda of European institutions and EU member states, but that the group’s role today is nowhere near what it was twenty years ago.

“This does not mean that their recommendations do not contain elements that have been coordinated or agreed upon with some of the leaders of certain EU countries, or with what could be described as the ‘deep state’ within the EU and Washington,” Mitic told Kosovo Online.

Some of the ICG’s suggestions include that the countries which do not currently recognize Kosovo should signal that, with full normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, they would not stand in the way of Kosovo’s recognition. The ICG also recommends that the EU double its efforts to leverage its advantages – particularly the prospect of accession – to pressure Pristina to protect the Serb minority and ensure the establishment of the Community of Serb-Majority Municipalities.

Mitic, however, says that the idea of EU pressure at this point is laughable.

“There have been plenty of opportunities in recent years for Brussels to influence Pristina in various ways, especially at times when ethnic cleansing was being carried out, and even today when a form of apartheid exists that is truly astonishing to see in Europe in 2025. All of this is being tolerated, just as the Greater Albanian policy is being tolerated,” Mitic stressed.

He points out that there is a dual role of Brussels: on one side is the official Brussels and the deep Brussels establishment that tolerates Albin Kurti and his policies, supported primarily by Berlin, and on the other is the formal role of the European Union, involving all its member states within the EU Council, where no consensus exists due to five countries that do not recognize Kosovo.

“The ICG’s message is directed toward the first Brussels, which, in a sense, denies the existence of non-recognizers and is effectively pushing Pristina toward a process of European integration, even though Kosovo is not a state. The issue of non-recognizers is very important and often ignored in Brussels’ official positions. It certainly poses an obstacle, because any process of so-called Kosovo’s European integration cannot begin before the non-recognizers change their stance. Therefore, the ICG’s recommendations aim to pressure Brussels and the non-recognizers to allow Pristina to formally launch that process,” Mitic explained.

Still, he adds, it seems that for now we are far from a positive decision by the non-recognizers on such a process.

“All of this is just groundwork, as the International Crisis Group has done in the past. Their goal has always been to prepare the ground, to put an issue on the agenda, and to make it something European institutions and EU member states would then have to address,” Mitic said.

He concludes that ICG’s latest recommendations are fully consistent with the group’s long-standing approach: “Let us find any mechanism possible to help Kosovo Albanians achieve their maximalist goals.”

Mitic emphasizes that, regarding Kosovo, the International Crisis Group has spent the past twenty years issuing recommendations aligned with what later turned out to be the general direction of Western policy on Kosovo.

This, he says, was evident in 2004 after the March pogrom, when ICG used that opportunity to propose accelerating the negotiation process and abandoning the “standards before status” policy.

“We saw it again in 2007, at the beginning of the Troika’s role, when instead of allowing the formation of any serious mechanism to reach a different solution, they proposed, as early as September 2007, the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence as the right solution. In doing so, they undermined diplomatic efforts and offered a proposal that later proved to be, and remains, official Western policy, with all the catastrophic consequences not only for Kosovo and Metohija but also for global security, as we can still witness today,” Mitic said.

He adds that the International Crisis Group at that time considered its work on the Kosovo issue largely complete and subsequently turned its focus to other global hot spots, mostly with more failures than successes in its recommendations.