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The author is rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (iwm.at) in Vienna.
It’s hardly a secret that there’s not a lot chemistry between President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia and Albin Kurti, Kosovo’s prime minister. However every was anticipated to obtain the identical robust message from Nato and the EU on a two-day journey to Brussels beginning on Wednesday: “Recover from it, tone down the rhetoric and, for God’s sake, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate!”
The pair have been as a consequence of have separate conferences with Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, earlier than joint discussions on Thursday with Josep Borrell, the EU international coverage chief. Each Nato, which has 4,000 troops stationed in Kosovo, and the EU have proven indicators of dropping endurance with the 2 Balkan leaders. However behind the irritation lurks an actual trepidation.
At the beginning of August, the federal government in Pristina mentioned members of the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo should swap their Republic of Serbia car registration plates for Kosovo ones. This was in keeping with agreements reached in 2013 and 2015. However Kurti determined with out warning to carry the ruling ahead by a month. In response, Serbs in northern Kosovo put up roadblocks and brandished firearms, resulting in a rapid rise in tensions.
Belgrade and Pristina traded insults and darkish hints of battle. Vučić accuses the Kosovo authorities of blocking the formation of an Affiliation of Serbian Municipalities in Kosovo, which was a part of the normalisation accords. Kurti counters by calling Vučić a “little Putin”, bent on invading Kosovo simply because the Russian chief invaded Ukraine.
Belgrade usually stands accused of fostering shut ties with Moscow, influenced by the historic friendship between Serbs and Russians. The historical past is extra sophisticated. Vučić has resisted EU and US stress to affix sanctions on Russia. However on the UN, Belgrade condemned Russia’s invasion.
It took mixed stress from the EU, US and UK to defuse the flare-up in northern Kosovo. However alarm bells have been set off at Nato and EU headquarters. The backdrop is a growing disaffection in elements of the western Balkans brought on by the EU’s failure to dwell as much as its promise, first made 20 years in the past, to combine the area into the 27-nation bloc.
This disaffection has not gone unnoticed in Moscow, which for years has gently stoked divisions inside and between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania. In an unhelpful growth, Croatia and Bulgaria have leveraged their standing as EU members to use unwarranted stress on Bosnia and North Macedonia, respectively.
All these processes have intensified because the battle in Ukraine, which is testing European resilience and unity. The EU is internet hosting thousands and thousands of Ukrainian refugees. It faces a winter vitality crunch. Wildfires rage throughout Europe. Inflation is hovering. Brussels wants instability within the Balkans like a gap within the head.
It’d look as if Serbia and Kosovo won’t ever overcome their variations. But on vital points, together with the combination of Kosovo Serbs into the nation’s authorized system, actual progress has been made. Each side have proven a quiet willingness to compromise. Neither has flagged up these successes for worry of a backlash from nationalists in their very own ranks.
Western diplomats fear that the sirens of nationalist populism could also be seducing some members of each governments and that the Serbian minority in Kosovo is turning into stressed, believing Belgrade has already conceded an excessive amount of to Pristina.
Kurti and Vučić want to beat their private and political variations. Equally, the EU should revitalise its technique of absorbing the western Balkans. The longer the Kosovo dispute festers and the area’s states stay exterior the EU, the larger the hazard of a catastrophic destabilisation of south-eastern Europe. That’s in no one’s pursuits. Besides Moscow’s.