Dhe Kosovar Foreign Minister Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz officially handed over her country’s application for admission to the Council of Europe on Thursday. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić announced on the same day that his country was opposed to Kosovar membership and would do everything in its power to prevent that from happening.
Unlike the United Nations or the EU, the Council of Europe has neither veto powers nor a principle of unanimity when admitting new members. After Russia was excluded, the political situation in the Council of Europe changed in favor of Kosovo. Mathematically, there would have been a two-thirds majority for admission even before that, because more than two-thirds of the member states of the Council of Europe have recognized Kosovo’s independence, which was proclaimed in 2008. With Russia’s departure, the government in Prishtina is now anticipating even better prospects for its own application.
Belgrade speaks of breaking the Washington Agreement
Serbia, which continues to claim its former province as part of its own national territory, is outraged by the Kosovan government’s move. President Vučić said Kosovo had violated the so-called Washington Agreement. Essentially, these are two statements that are not worded identically and that both states signed in Washington in September 2020 under pressure from the then American President Donald Trump and his Balkan negotiator Richard Grenell.
The statements included a hodgepodge of declarations of intent. This included a promise by Kosovo not to seek membership in new organizations for a year. Vučić announced that Belgrade’s answer would be “clever and wise” and that it would oppose the admission of Kosovo in a “peaceful and diplomatic manner”. “Our options are limited and not great, but life is a struggle,” he said. These and other statements made it clear that a success of the Kosovan request is at least not ruled out in Belgrade.
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