The last weeks of this year have been loaded with Balkan tension. Since August there has been an upsurge in clashes between Pristina and Belgrade focused on the northern part of Kosovo. Tensions between the parties have been recurring since Kosovo’s declaration of independence. The most recent began in the summer with the growing tuition crisis, which finally led to the resignation in November of the Kosovar Serb representatives of Parliament, the judiciary and the police, and of the four mayors of the municipalities Serb majority. The events of the last days have to do precisely with the call for elections in those municipalities as Kosovar Serbs refuse to participate in them until the Pristina government implements the EU-sponsored agreement in 2013 that grants them greater local autonomy. Of course, Pristina refuses under the allegation that this would favor Serbian interference in the area. So far the facts.
Since 2011, when the Pristina-Serbia Dialogue promoted by the EU was launched, the talks have been constant between the parties, with moments of greater intensity and others of stagnation. However, the current situation differs from the previous ones because there is now a standardization proposal, a plan launched by France and Germany with the support of the EU, NATO, the US and the United Kingdom and which establishes a roadmap of the steps to follow in order to reach an agreement between the parties. This plan aims to reach a normalization agreement during the spring of 2023. The reason for such optimism is because it is the first time that the European and North American political agendas are aligned and they work together on the dossier, plus it seems that both parties are willing to sit down and talksomething that is, in itself, an advance.
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Therefore, what is observed these days on the ground are essentially political maneuvers by both parties with the intention of measuring the capacities of the opponent at the negotiating table. Serbia, for the moment, is the one that is playing its cards the best. At the same time, it shows its destabilizing capacity in the region, as well as the Pristina’s inability to control its own territory. In addition, he shows himself to be the defender of legality and appeals to NATO as a guarantor of stability. Kosovo, for its part, incorporates the Russian card into the game, alleging Belgrade’s ties with Moscow, and presenting its EU candidacy assimilating its position to that of Ukraine, something not very well seen by non-recognising countries, one of them, by the way, Spain.
Of course, one of the news for next year would be that an agreement could be reached between Kosovo and Serbia that would unblock a situation that has lasted too many years. The question is whether the political elites of these territories are really willing to favor it or if, on the contrary, they are going to continue tightening the rope and fueling the confrontation with the sole objective of staying in power.