Kosovo Stalls on Serbian Municipal Association

Despite reports that the Kosovo government will push ahead with the establishment of an autonomous Association of Serbian Municipalities in the mainly Serbian north of the country, officials have confirmed to BIRN that an agreement is not in sight yet.

Bajram Gecaj, deputy minister for local government, stated that the government has much work ahead before the agreement can move forward.

Amid continuing protests against the deal from opposition parties and with Serbian MPs currently boycotting parliament, the government is not rushing to formally propose the model that would give the Serbian community more autonomy at local level.  

Although the government formed a working group to draft the statute of the Serbian association in July, Gecaj said no steps have been taken in that direction.

As BIRN previously reported, the EU-mediated agreement between Serbia and Kosovo reached in mid-2015 envisaged that the statute of the Association would be drafted within four months, a deadline that expired last December.

But Gecaj told BIRN that work on the draft statute could take more months, as Kosovo's institutions were now busy working on the agreement on telecommunications with Serbia.

"The work on the draft has not yet begun. We had the telecom issue and now, after this agreement was reached, we will be waiting for signals, but it will take a few months," Gecaj said.

The deal reached last week between Kosovo and Serbia on telecommunication was seen as a step forward towards solving the status of the municipalities with a mainly Serbian population.

On November 6, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to allow the International Telecommunication Union, ITU, to allocate a new, separate telephone code for Kosovo, ...