The EU's special representative for dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, Miroslav Lajčak, said in an interview with Hina that the statute of municipalities in Kosovo with a majority Serb population must be "acceptable to both sides and in accordance with European standards."

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti will meet in Brussels on Tuesday, and then they will be presented with the draft statute of the municipalities in the north of Kosovo, which is a key point of the negotiations.

“The management team will present the draft. We don’t know what’s in it, but it should be the beginning of the process. Ultimately, we need to have a statute that is acceptable to both sides, Kosovo and Serbia, in accordance with European standards. This is the first important step,” said Lajčak.

The management team has been envisaged by the Agreement on the Normalisation of Relations between Kosovo and Serbia from 2013, with the aim of writing a statute for the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities. It consists of four people stationed in Kosovo who were formally hired by the Kosovo government, but nominated by municipalities with a majority Serb population.

Since Lajčak took office in April 2020, there have been no activities of the management team.

“This is the first time we will see their work,” the 60-year-old Slovak diplomat said.

For Belgrade, the formation of a community of Serb municipalities is the most important thing in the negotiations, while Kosovo, on the other hand, is trying to prevent this community from having executive powers, stressing that it does not want something like Republika Srpska in BiH on its territory.

Lajčak says that ultimately it will depend on the two parties how the statute will look like.

“We are here to implement what was agreed upon during the dialogue. It was not imposed, it was agreed between Serbia and Kosovo in 2013. It is important for us that every solution be a European solution,” he said.

“We therefore have to implement what was agreed earlier, but at the same time we have to get inspiration from the practical solutions of existing European models. We don’t want to create something that has never been tested anywhere in the world, but we want to find inspiration in European models that work well”, added Lajčak, but did not give concrete examples.

In a recent interview with Hina, Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti said that he had not yet seen the status proposal, but emphasised that he would not allow the creation of some form of Republika Srpska in the north of Kosovo, that is, “a satellite parastate with a destructive essence that would undermine the statehood of Kosovo.”

Asked to comment on that statement, Lajčak said: “Republika Srpska was established during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Then the urgent priority was to stop the war, and now we are not in wartime, so we don’t even need such solutions”.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić told the Tanjug news agency on Monday that he does not believe that Kosovo will accept the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities at the meeting in Brussels. Dačic said that “everything is disputed” by the Kosovo side, only in order to prevent the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities.

Can Kurti and Vučić find a common language?

Two negotiators in Brussels, Kurti (48) and Vučić (53), were active participants in the events during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

As a young radical, an associate of Vojislav Šešelj, Vučić gave war-mongering and nationalist speeches, such as the infamous one in occupied Glina in 1995, and during the war in Kosovo he was the Minister of Information in the administration of Slobodan Milošević.

Kurti, the leader of the 1997 Kosovo student protests against the regime of Slobodan Milošević, worked in Kosovo in 1998 as a secretary in the office of the chief political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1999, he was arrested by the Serbian police in Pristina and taken to a prison in Serbia, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and released after 2 years and seven months.

Lajčak, who supervised the 2006 referendum on the independence of Montenegro on behalf of the EU, and worked as a high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2007 to 2009, hopes that Vučić and Kurti will find a solution.”

Mr. Vučić and Mr. Kurti have democratic legitimacy, based on the election results, both are strong leaders. This means that they are leaders who can make decisions,” he said.

“This process also showed how important dialogue is. It is important that they talk to each other, that they listen to each other. I can testify that the first meeting was difficult, but they learned to talk to each other, listen to each other, disagree, but respect each other, so that is very important,” he added.

Lajčak notes that he respects both of them.

“They are my partners …, they were legitimately democratically elected by their electorate, they have the ability to come up with solutions, and I believe they will solve the problem,” he said.

The meeting on Tuesday in Brussels should, he says, “be the beginning of the process of drafting the statute of the community of Serb municipalities, but also the beginning of the implementation of other elements of the agreement of February 27.”

Kurti and Vučić had previously met in Brussels on February 27.

“After May 2, I want to see dynamics and a credible process so that we can progress in the implementation of all elements,” said Lajčak.