Kosovo agrees to reduce police presence to ease tensions in northern municipalities

Pristina announces that it will support the holding of extraordinary local elections

July 12 () –

The Government of Kosovo has agreed to reduce the police presence to help reduce tensions in the northern municipalities, with a Serb majority, the scene of strong episodes of tension in recent months.

This agreement, which has been reached in a meeting in Bratislava with the special envoy of the European Union for the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, Miroslav Lajcak, includes an “immediate reduction of 25 percent in the police presence inside and around the buildings municipal”.

According to a statement, the Kosovo Police, together with the EU civilian mission (EULEX) and the NATO mission (KFOR), will assess the security situation “as necessary” in order to study the “possibility of further reduce the police presence.

In addition, the agreement aims to organize early elections after the “summer season” in the four municipalities with a Kosovar Serb majority, whose population and formations boycotted the elections in mid-April, registering a 3.4 percent turnout. “Kosovo expresses its commitment to guarantee the necessary legal basis to allow the organization of these elections,” the letter states.

The Kosovo Serb population and the Belgrade government have denounced that the Kosovo Albanian authorities in Pristina have been carrying out a policy of harassment since the proclamation of the Republic of Kosovo in 2008, which ended up culminating in November last year with the resignation of the northern Serb mayors. .

This institutional vacuum, added to a previous crisis over the registration of vehicles, ended up degenerating into attacks, barricades and threats of military intervention by Belgrade, with the consequent paralysis of the stabilization negotiations that the European Union is trying to promote.