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Endless EU Facilitated - Mediated Dialogue Between Kosovo and Serbia

The dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia facilitated and mediated by the EU and strong U.S. support is a critical part of sustainable peace, stability, and the road to the European integration of the Western Balkans. This article seeks to provide the mediators’ insights into the process of dialogue by outlining the factors and circumstances in which it is being developed, as well as analyzing strategies that lead toward desired success, peace, stability, and the EU integration of the Western Balkans. The article discusses the important issues linked with the dialogue that is being facilitated and negotiated by the EU, including essential activities, challenges, difficulties, obstacles, antagonism (inner and international), the approach the EU facilitators/mediators undertake as well as the reaction and the expected results that the parties involved in the process have regarding reaching a final solution to the dispute. The researchers of this paper used the methods of legal analysis, comparative analysis, and teleological analysis. The study is an update of the work done in the field by the authors and aims to contribute to further political, diplomatic, and academic debate developed in this field locally and internationally.

Endless EU Facilitated - Mediated Dialogue Between Kosovo and Serbia
 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence was a political act and it was expected to be the final step for normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia. The normalization of relations, however, did not happen and the expected normalization was not established smoothly or quickly. The roots of the disputes between Kosovo and Serbia are not only based on the dissolution of Yugoslavia. From 1913 to 1918, Kosovo was a province of Serbia. Then, from 1918 to 1929 it was a part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. In 1929 it became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia until 1944. From 1945-1946 until the dissolution of Yugoslavia, it mostly maintained a dual status: It was a constitutive element of the federation and a part of the constitutional system of Serbia. Its position within the Yugoslav federation was very similar to other federal units. However, a little over a hundred years ago, major European powers unjustly decided to put Kosovo in a situation in which it did not belong.1 That decision made by Europe’s major powers of the time “has been largely responsible for the historical injustices and sufferings of the Kosovo Albanians for the past hundred years and perhaps for the Balkanization of the entire region.”2 The mentioned state no longer exists, whereas the last one, the Federal Republic of Socialist Yugoslavia, dissolved through a process that took hundreds of thousands of lives, included genocide and crimes against humanity, and saw atrocities that had not been seen in Europe since World War II. The federation was dissolved mostly as a result of two tendencies: first, it strived for dominance and hegemony over the others, represented by Serbia as one of the units of the federation, and second, the tendency for more decentralization, more democracy, and more freedom represented by other federal units and other nations.

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