Not ideal, but clearly a step forward

Lady Ashton’s patience has paid off. Belgrade and Priština have finally reached a compromise on integration of four Serb-dominated municipalities of northern Kosovo into the country’s regular institutions. Although the agreement is not ideal since it preserves ethnic-based political divisions, it is clearly a step forward, likely to resolve a number of currently burning issues.

What could prove a serious problem is implementation. Northern Kosovo Serbs have announced they will strongly resist any attempt to enforce the agreement on them. They can count on support from far-right extremists in Serbia who are already mobilizing. Even prime minister Ivica Dačić and his deputy Aleksandar Vučić are receiving hundreds of SMS messages with terrible death threats after their mobile phone numbers have been publicly revealed by members of Vučić’s former ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party. Moreover, a couple of days ago an extremist from the pro-Russian clerical fascist movement “Naši” approached and verbally attacked Dačić during the Belgrade marathon.

While militant nationalists in Serbia may not be as numerous as before, they still pose a considerable threat, in the first place to public safety. Now that Dačić and Vučić are also potentially at risk, they could use it as a well-grounded justification to finally crack down on the militants before it has become too late.

It is hard to say who among Serbian politicians will benefit most from the deal with Priština. Latest opinion polls indicate that more than 50 percent of the public support both the dialogue in general and this particular agreement, but they are at the same time feeling largely fed up with both Kosovo and the European perspective. People want to see a concrete improvement in their standard of living.

In terms of future relationships between Kosovo and Serbia, the dynamic between the two countries will be as important to watch as that within each of them alone. For full-fledged normalization the imperative must be to put an end to deep-rooted mutual distrust between ordinary Albanians and Serbs, not only in Kosovo but also in Serbia. That will require intensive cooperation and a great deal of good will on the part of both governments.

Even more important will be developments inside the European Union in relation to its own crisis, which seems far from over.  It is only European integration that is somehow still keeping the Western Balkans relatively calm.  The more the crisis deepens, the lesser will be the ability of Brussels to keep the region under control.