The greatest help Albania can offer itself and the nation as a whole is to diligently pursue the difficult reforms necessary for EU membership. Interfering in Kosovo’s internal affairs—as if it were the discovery of “terra incognita” or akin to a child dismantling a toy to understand its mechanism only to be unable to restore it—saps vital energy from the European strategic direction of both Albania and Kosovo as two independent states.
Author: Veton Surroi
In recent years, Prime Minister Rama has made various public proposals on how Kosovo should act in its relations with Serbia.
The most recent proposal, presented in the Kosovo Assembly during the joint meetings of the Kosovo and Albanian parliaments, was a kind of elaboration on an idea previously put forward by some Western diplomats and President Osmani. In its original form, the idea suggested that Kosovo should unilaterally implement the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement. In its elaborated version, Mr. Rama suggests that Kosovo “freeze, indefinitely, its bilateral dialogue with Serbia and pursue normalization of relations with its northern neighbor through bilateral dialogue with the European Union, severing the nationalist reciprocity umbilical cord with Serbia and establishing a European reciprocity umbilical cord with the EU.” Kosovo must provide “an indisputable demonstration of its will and belonging to the bosom of a united Europe and NATO, by unilaterally fulfilling all conditions for normalizing relations with Serbia.”
Mr. Rama’s proposal is inappropriate on several levels.
Firstly, Kosovo needs to normalize its relations with Serbia. Kosovo’s unsettled relationships with the EU and NATO are not the result of failing to meet the Copenhagen criteria for democracy, rule of law, or civilian control over the armed forces—Kosovo is ahead of some of its neighbors and even some EU and NATO member states in this regard. The unsettled relationships with NATO and the EU are directly tied to the unresolved Kosovo–Serbia relationship.
Consequently, while Kosovo needs normalization with its neighbor to close the conflict, unilateral fulfillment of the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement does not fundamentally alter the current state of affairs regarding the EU and NATO. Without a certified act of normalization between Kosovo and Serbia, EU and NATO member states that have not recognized Kosovo lack formal justification to do so. Moreover, even with unilateral, full, point-by-point implementation of the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement, Serbia could still, at some future moment, make additional demands while insisting it would never recognize an independent Kosovo.
Thus, Kosovo would end up burdened by Serbia’s unwillingness to engage in dialogue.
The reasoning behind this idea, whether in its original form or the elaborated version presented by Prime Minister Rama, draws on precedents from past negotiations, such as Rambouillet and Vienna. Back then, Kosovo unilaterally committed to implementing agreements it had pledged to and succeeded. In the first instance, Kosovo achieved liberation through NATO states’ intervention and international administration as a preparatory step for determining its final status. In the second, Kosovo gained support for its declared independence, along with backing from a large part of the democratic world.
In the current case, there is no identifiable objective that would justify transformation, for a simple reason: the normalization of relations between Kosovo and the EU and NATO (which would be transformative) depends on member states. In today’s constellation of international relations, some EU and NATO member states are further from the values of these organizations than Kosovo itself, making it difficult to convince them that advancing Kosovo is in their interest. Even those that are Atlanticist and Europeanist (such as Spain and Greece, for example) find it challenging to support Kosovo in the absence of normalized relations with Serbia.
To put it conceptually: Kosovo managed to free itself from Serbia without Serbia’s consent, declared independence, and became a sovereign state without Serbia’s consent, but it cannot achieve normalized relations with Serbia without Serbia’s consent. Prime Minister Rama refers to this last relationship as the “nationalist reciprocity umbilical cord.” I believe the description is incorrect because there is no reciprocity: Kosovo has not declared that it will never recognize Serbia. On the contrary, Kosovo has expressed its willingness to establish diplomatic relations and build good neighborly relations with Serbia.
What Mr. Rama calls “nationalist reciprocity” is, in fact, the context of European reciprocity: Kosovo needs normalized relations with Serbia for the sake of good neighborly relations and its relations with the EU and NATO. Serbia needs normalized relations with Kosovo for the same reasons.
In this European context, Kosovo is not the problem. The problem lies in Serbia’s hesitation and the EU’s diplomatic weakness. Serbia hesitated to accept normalization with Kosovo as offered in the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement, and the EU sought to accommodate this hesitation with interpretative acrobatics regarding the agreement’s validity despite one side openly expressing reservations.
In this context of the negotiation process and as we enter a year of restructuring EU and U.S. policies (with the new Commission and the potential return of President Trump), Prime Minister Rama’s idea for Kosovo to freeze negotiations with Serbia is unwise. Firstly, Kosovo already has a tradition of being a predictable Western partner and, over more than thirty years of negotiations—even in very difficult moments—it has not walked away from the table. The message from Kosovo should not be about freezing but about dynamizing the dialogue.
Secondly, freezing negotiations (or walking away from the table) would shift blame for past failures onto Kosovo rather than Serbia’s reservations or Brussels’ diplomatic shortcomings. In Brussels, this would enable a new narrative absolving responsibility, portraying the dialogue’s failure as a result of Kosovo’s indefinite “freeze” rather than Serbia’s refusal to fully embrace the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement. This would conveniently transfer the burden of pressure from the EU to Kosovo.
Thirdly, the EU’s credibility in assigning responsibility (to avoid saying blame) is evidenced by the fact that Kosovo is under EU sanctions while defending itself against a political and paramilitary operation aiming to destabilize part of its territory. (Coincidentally, this is the very region Prime Minister Rama omits when declaring that Albanians extend “from Konispol to Mitrovica.”)
Prime Minister Rama’s recent actions align with his approach over the past decade. He has supported the idea that Kosovo should cede territory to reach an agreement with Serbia. Beyond offering unsolicited “brotherly opinions,” he has presented Kosovo with a draft statute for the Association of Serb-majority municipalities, proposed without consulting Kosovo that NATO take over administration of Kosovo’s northern region, and suspended the joint government meeting scheduled in Peja, making Albania the first state to impose sanctions on Kosovo for its so-called “unilateral” actions. Most recently, at the Pristina meeting, alongside other recommendations on Kosovo’s history and judiciary, he proposed freezing negotiations with Serbia and unilaterally implementing the Brussels/Ohrid Agreement.
The justification for these actions combined his self-declared Euro-Atlantic responsibility as a state initiating EU negotiations and national responsibility. In both cases, Prime Minister Rama would have done better to exchange views privately with his counterpart and opposition representatives in Kosovo. In both cases, theatrical displays and folklore surpass the bounds of good intellectual discourse, crossing the line where the thoughts of a neighboring country’s prime minister turn into calls for action, effectively interfering in another state’s internal affairs.
Albania’s path to EU membership does not depend in the slightest on Kosovo’s actions, let alone the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue. The greatest help Albania can provide itself and the nation as a whole is to pursue the difficult reforms needed for EU membership. Interfering in Kosovo’s internal affairs—like a discoverer of “terra incognita” or a child dismantling a toy—distracts from the European strategic direction for Albania and Kosovo as two independent states.
Prime Minister Rama would do Albania, Kosovo, and their Euro-Atlantic trajectory a favor by being less consistent in offering “brotherly ideas.”
Source: Koha.net
