Lajcak: EU intends to restart Belgrade-Pristina dialogue at leaders' level

BRUSSELS - Outgoing EU special envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue Miroslav Lajcak says the EU intends to restart the dialogue at leaders' level after the upcoming elections in Kosovo-Metohija and that Brussels is preparing proposals for both sides in a process to be steered by EU foreign policy and security chief Kaja Kallas with assistance from Lajcak's successor, Peter Sorensen.

Asked by the RTS about the current state of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and normalisation of relations compared to the start of his term in the spring of 2020, Lajcak said on Tuesday the state of the dialogue was now better but that normalisation had made no progress due to numerous crises.

He said the dialogue had been non-existent in April 2020 after there had been no dialogue from 2018 and that his first task had been to revive it, which he noted had happened quite soon, with a first meeting of leaders in July 2020.

"To date, we have had 14 meetings at leaders' level and 31 meetings at chief negotiators' level. I have visited Belgrade 28 times and I have also visited Pristina the same number of times. We have had numerous meetings with the leaders within international conferences. We have concrete results: a solution to the missing persons issue, a solution to the energy situation in the north of Kosovo, and travel with IDs," Lajcak said, noting that an Ohrid agreement on the path to normalisation of relations was the most significant result.