Stano: I cannot confirm a date for the resumption of the dialogue

EU Spokesperson Peter Stano stated today that there are no announcements and that he cannot confirm a date for the next meeting within the framework of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue.

“There is no announcement I could make about any kind of upcoming meeting in the framework of the EU-facilitated dialogue,” Stano said.

The last round of dialogue was held in mid-September, with Serbia represented by the Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, and Kosovo represented by Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi in Brussels.

At that time, Petkovic emphasized that Belgrade is always ready for discussions and finding a compromise solution, but warned that the dialogue process loses its meaning if Pristina refuses to discuss issues related to the protection of Serb rights in Kosovo.

Kosovo's Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi stated then that the letter from former Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic opposing the implementation of some points of the Ohrid Agreement had not been withdrawn and that the trilateral meeting in Brussels had not happened because Serbia had “conditioned the meeting's agenda with unacceptable demands for Kosovo.”

A trilateral meeting was also not held at the end of June, when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti were in Brussels.

“The meeting with Borrell and Lajcak was fair, but there was no trilateral meeting with Kurti. He either didn't want to or didn’t dare meet with me, ask him,” Vucic told reporters at the time, adding that Borrell and Lajcak had informed him that Kurti had not been ready for a meeting with him and that the dialogue should continue with the main negotiators.

On October 6, the EU Special Envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, stated that he would work on preparing the next meeting between the chief negotiators from Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels as part of the EU-mediated dialogue, and he expressed his hope that the meeting would take place in the coming weeks.