Life in Kosovo discusses the boards of public enterprises
This Thursday, Life in Kosovo broadcasts a debate on the performance of the boards of public enterprises.
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Every Thursday starting from 20:30, Radio Television Kosovo, RTK, broadcasts the TV debate show "Life in Kosovo", a joint production of BIRN and RTK.
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Kosovo Final Status
INTERVIEW: EU Mission ‘to Coach Kosovo into Europe’
01 February 2007 EU diplomat says new body
will have fewer powers than its Bosnian counterpart.
By Jeta Xharra in London (Balkan Insight, 1 Feb 07)
The European Union Council’s representative to Kosovo and head of the preparation team for the International Civilian Office, ICO, Torbjorn Sohlstrom, says the new EU mission, which is expected to take over from UNMIK and help run Kosovo after a new UN Security Council resolution is passed, will soon be ready.
In a wide-ranging interview with Balkan Insight, Sohlstrom said they would be ready in two to three months. “It’s not going to depend on us. We will be ready as soon as we have to be,” he said.
Sohlstrom says a future International Civilian Representative will oversee two components: one will be the ICO, a team of less than one hundred international officials, whose role will be to monitor and assist implementation of the final-status settlement; the second will be an EU mission made up of more than one thousand experts in the field of justice and policing, whose specific focus will be on improving the rule of law in Kosovo.
Sohlstrom dismisses speculation about exactly when EU countries will recognize Kosovo’s statehood, noting that the UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari will first present his comprehensive proposal to Belgrade and to Pristina: “This will be followed with a period of engagement, of discussion, with the parties. Eventually this process will be concluded and I expect the European Union will respond to the conclusion of the process in a unified manner”.
He said many differences on Kosovo in Europe had already vanished. “There were big nuances between the member states of the European Union on the issue of Kosovo let’s say two or three years ago [but since then] there’s been a convergence of views,” he said, adding that “ongoing discussion” between the member states and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and others was reducing the remaining differences.
Kosovo has been a UN protectorate since 1999 when NATO forced out the Serbian authorities and assumed control. Negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo over a solution have been going on for a year but the two sides remain far apart.
Many have speculated that the new international authority in Kosovo will resemble the model used since 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the High Representative was granted wide powers that allow him, among others things, to dismiss elected officials and veto laws.
Sohlstrom says the mission in Kosovo will differ both from UNMIK and the Bosnian model.
“UNMIK has been responsible for everything in Kosovo; the future international presence will be responsible for very, very few things,” he said.
“Governance, the responsibility to govern Kosovo, will pass from the international community to the institutions of Kosovo,” he added.
“There will be certain competencies, certain possible powers for the international community to intervene if things go wrong in selected areas,” he continued.
These will include the topics raised in the Vienna talks, such as decentralisation, the protection of cultural heritage and minority rights.
“But there are a lot of things … where the international community will have no power whatsoever,” he pointed out.
The future international civilian representative will have the powers to take whatever measures he or she deems necessary to stop people from sabotaging implementation of the settlement.
Sohlstrom compares the situation in Kosovo to this metaphor: whereas UNMIK owned the Kosovo football club, the EU is going to be more like a coach.
“We don’t see that [Bosnian] kind of powers at the disposal of the international community in Kosovo,” he said. “We expect the status settlement to provide the international community, the EU, the US, with some specific clearly defined intervention powers to provide certain guarantees, but we don’t expect to get involved in every sector.”
He added: “Overall responsibility for governing Kosovo will be with the authorities of Kosovo and that’s the fundamental difference from what we have seen in Bosnia and with what we have seen in Kosovo for the past seven years.”
“We are not the solution. The solution is the authorities of Kosovo and they will have to assume responsibility for the economy, education and all these things that are important for long term development.”
Turning to the burning issue of the mainly Serbian north of Kosovo, where some local leaders talk of secession in the event of Kosovo’s independence, Sohlstrom is determined this will not occur.
“There will be no excuses not to implement the settlement in any part of Kosovo,” he said. “We know there are specific challenges across the north [and] I don’t expect these challenges to go away immediately but we will make the north of Kosovo a priority”.
He suggested that the mission in the north of Kosovo would probably comprise around 15 officials. Asked what would happen if Albanians made support for decentralisation conditional on a resolution of the situation in the north, he said such conditioning was out of the question.
“We expect everyone to play their role and uphold their obligations … and that no one will condition cooperation or compliance with the UN Security Council on what other people do,” he said.
Over the next few years, the way in which the EU is engaged in Kosovo will evolve. “In the beginning, we will all be focused on a number of short-term challenges linked to the implementation of the settlement,” he said.
“Later, if this goes well, we will be able to focus on structural reforms and economic development,” he added.
“We are not just carrying out a rule-of-law mission. We are putting together an assistance package that is more assistance per person than anywhere else in the world, just to help Kosovo to gradually grapple with the key reforms that eventually will help it move closer to Brussels.”
Asked when the mission would leave, Sohlstrom said it all depended on the pace of implementation. “When there’s no need for this [mission] we will not be here anymore; we don’t want to do this, we do it because we have to,” he said.
Once a settlement is implemented, there will be no need for an international civilian office. In the meantime, the EU is concentrating on its engagement with Kosovo, not withdrawal.
“The EU doesn’t have an exit strategy,” he said. “We have an entry strategy for Kosovo into the European Union.”
Jeta Xharra is director of BIRN Kosovo. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.
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The opinions expressed in Balkan Insight are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
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