Nikolic: Kurti is avoiding the CSM because it would be a mechanism for protecting Serbs from within

President of the Serbian Parliament’s Committee on Kosovo and Metohija Danijela Nikolic said today that Kosovo’s caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti feared the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities (CSM) not because it would “undermine Kosovo’s functionality,” but because it would limit his ability to shut down Serbian institutions and make decisions about the lives of Serbs without their participation.

Nikolic noted in a post on X that the CSM was not a recent demand by Belgrade, but had been agreed under the 2013 Brussels Agreement, with its competencies further elaborated in 2015.

According to her, those documents envisaged an Community of Serb-majority Municipalities with its own Statute and bodies—including an Assembly, President, Council, and other structures—and provided for the CSM to have a role in areas crucial to the survival of Serbs in Kosovo, including education, healthcare, economic development, social welfare, and urban and rural planning, as well as in representing the common interests of its members before the central authorities.

“That is why Kurti is avoiding the CSM. Because the CSM means that Serbs are not subjects whose institution Pristina can shut down today, whose rules it can change tomorrow, and for whom it can decide the day after tomorrow how their schools, healthcare, or local government will operate. Kurti is now openly saying that ‘the CSM would be a mechanism for challenging Kosovo’s functionality from within.’ No. The CSM would be a mechanism for protecting Serbs from within. That is precisely why he has been so persistent in rejecting it. And there is another fact that no amount of political rhetoric can erase: the obligation to establish the CSM has existed for more than 13 years,” Nikolic said.

She stressed that even the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had emphasized in 2024 that the establishment of the CSM should serve to increase citizens’ democratic participation and that there was no reason for any further delay.

“Therefore, the problem for Kurti is not ‘functionality.’ The problem is that the CSM would give Serbs an institutional voice, collective protection, and the ability to ensure that issues crucial to their survival do not depend exclusively on his political will. And 13 years of an unfulfilled obligation best demonstrate who is actually avoiding agreements, rights, and normalization,” Danijela Nikolic, President of the Serbian Parliament’s Committee on Kosovo and Metohija, said.

Kurti does not fear the CSM because it would “undermine Kosovo’s functionality,” but because it would limit his ability to shut down Serbian institutions and make decisions about the lives of Serbs without their participation.

Kosovo’s caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on the “General Trinquant’s Headquarters” podcast that Pristina remained committed to normalizing relations with Serbia, but only on the basis of mutual recognition, while rejecting the establishment of the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities according to the model he claimed Belgrade was seeking.

He assessed that such an Community would have powers resembling those of the Republic of Srpska and would constitute a mechanism for challenging Kosovo’s functionality.