Spahiu: Not much depended on Lajcak in the dialogue

University professor Nexhmedin Spahiu tells Kosovo Online that he doesn't know the real impact of the European Union representative for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, during his four-year mandate in this position because, he emphasizes, not much depended on him in how things would progress.

"The fact that an agreement was reached may not be credited to him, but he cannot be blamed for the lack of better progress either. Not much depended on him in terms of how things would go. I don't know what his impact was because the main actors of the European Union, such as Scholz and Macron, contributed the most to the mediation by exerting necessary pressure on the parties to reach an agreement," Spahiu says.

However, he believes that Belgrade and Pristina are closer than they were before Lajcak took over as the mediator in the dialogue.

"Now we have an agreement on the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities, we have the Franco-German agreement, although it remains to be seen whether it will be implemented or not. But the fact that an agreement is on the table is a significant progress," Spahiu says.

Regarding the criticisms from officials in Pristina towards Lajcak as a mediator, especially intensified in recent times, our interlocutor says he cannot assess whether they are justified or not.

"Looking from the outside, based only on what the media report, I don't see anything except accusations from Pristina, but since I'm not part of the negotiating delegation, I can't conclude whether they were right or not. I would have to be part of the negotiations to know what the actual merits or diplomatic shortcomings of Miroslav Lajcak were," Spahiu says.