Pristina: Votes still missing to ratify Montenegro agreement

Kosovos Deputy Prime Minister Enver Hoxhaj says the border demarcation agreement with Montenegro needs to be ratified as soon as possible.

The meeting of European Council is on 22 and 23 March and to have Kosovo included in its agenda we need to vote and catch up, Hoxhaj said, according to Tanjug, which cited UNMIK's Media Observer.

After three failed attempts to ratify the demarcation agreement with Montenegro, signed on August 26, 2015 in Vienna, it is unclear when the Kosovo Assembly will again have this issue on the agenda, because, according to today's admission of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, the ruling coalition does not have a two-thirds majority.

The Kosovo Assembly has 120 seats, so 80 votes are necessary for ratification, and Haradinaj believes that a session will be held by the end of this or next week.

Consultations with political parties of the government and the opposition are ongoing, in order to secure votes, he said.

Haradinaj claims that there are ongoing consultations with the Serb List, which is part of the ruling coalition - although the list previously stated that they would not vote for the demarcation. The session of the parliamentary presidency, which should decide when the next session of the parliament will be convened with the agreement on its agenda, has not yet been scheduled, and most likely this will not happen before all 80 parliamentary votes have been secured.

Otherwise, during the parliamentary session on Wednesday, Albanian protesters from Pristina University rallied in front of the building, demanding the ratification of the agreement with Montenegro. The protesters were dressed in prison uniforms symbolizing the inability of Kosovo people to travel freely to Europe, daily Zeri reported.