Vladisavljev: Low chances of a vote on Kosovo’s Council of Europe membership this year

Stefan Vladisavljev, Program Coordinator at the BFPE Foundation for a Responsible Society, believes that the necessary criteria have not been sufficiently met to give the international community, or those setting the agenda for the upcoming session of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, confidence that the issue of the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo is being approached seriously. He recalls that last year, Council of Europe member states stated that the CSM is a kind of prerequisite for Kosovo’s membership in the institution.

“That being said, I give extremely low chances that there will even be a vote on Kosovo’s membership in the Council of Europe this year,” Vladisavljev says.

Ahead of the Committee of Ministers meeting, scheduled for May 13 and 14, he points out that it appears no meaningful progress has been made that would indicate there is political will, either from the current caretaker government or from any potential future ruling structures in Kosovo, to seriously address the CSM issue. He notes that this matter is not only part of the negotiations on Council of Europe membership, but also part of the EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

“There are no signals or strong enough indications that the Community of Serb Municipalities would be approached in an objective way, nor that a draft would be prepared that is acceptable both to the Serbian community in Kosovo and to international stakeholders who are guarantors of the normalization agreement, and thus also for the creation of the CSM. Because of that, we are not talking about Kosovo in the Council of Europe this year the way we did last year, when it was more or less considered a certainty, with the only question being whether it would make it onto the agenda. This time, we’re discussing whether it will make it onto the agenda at all,” Vladisavljev emphasizes.

At this moment, he adds, there are no clear indications of when and by whom the next Kosovo government will be formed. Therefore, he says, it is difficult to predict what its top priorities will be, and whether, if the government is formed before May 13, it will immediately send the European draft statute of the CSM to the Constitutional Court.

“The Community of Serb Municipalities, as an element of the normalization process, is certainly a highly important political issue for all parties involved, including the authorities in Pristina. However, there are not enough clear signals to determine how high it ranks on the list of priorities at this moment, especially since we don’t yet know who will be defining that list,” Vladisavljev concludes.