EU-Kosovo: Good progress but still long way to go with reforms
Pristina (6 May) - Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle was visiting Kosovo today to review its progress on EU reforms and discuss tasks and challenges ahead.
He met with President Atifete Jahjaga, Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi and leaders of the opposition parties. He also participated in the session of the National Council for European Integration where he spoke about what is needed for the success on the European path (read the speech here). In the talks with his counterparts the Commissioner underlined what the EU considers to be main key issue for Kosovo's EU agenda this year and commented on latest developments such as conclusions of the negotiations of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement as well as early elections expected to be called any time soon (read statement to the media here).
Commissioner Füle is also met the mayors of four municipalities in the north of Kosovo and this is what he said after the meeting:
"I had a very long, very open, frank and constructive discussion with four mayors and there were two specific issues which we addressed:
The first issue was how the EU could help the municipalities in the new situation to deliver on their mandate for the sake of the local citizens. How we could strengthen the local municipalities and their capacity to serve people on the ground. We also talked about the package of our financial help of €38,5m to support various projects in the north of Kosovo and we agreed on the following:
1) we will divide the projects into short term and medium/long term projects. We will make sure that the short term projects will start to bring benefits to people as soon as possible. In the other group of the projects, we will add timelines to be followed throughout the implementation.
2) we will strengthen the capacity of the EU House to be able to answer any questions the representatives of local municipalities might have about these projects and our continuing assisstance. I will underline to my colleagues here that there will be no question that would go unanswered by us on this important assistance.
3) we agreed to strengthen also our capacity to help the municipalities in the north and Pristina authorities to address whatever problems or difficulties we encounter in the implementation of these projects.
The second issue we discussed was the statutes of municipalities. We all have agreed that it is important to finalise this process to establish conditions for the Association of Serb Municipalities to be created.
We have been able to reduce the number of open issues and we will now reflect - after I inform my colleagues in the Commission and the High Representative - how we could address the remaining few issues there.
My last comment is the most important message I have: while the Serbian municipalities have a very important role to play in the implementation of the April Agreement, we will make an extra effort to be as helpful as we can in assisting them to do their job. The most important measurement of this is not going to be some kind of bureaucratic list of task, but the fact that people, living in this region, would feel more secure and enjoy a better life; that people here would also enjoy the benefits of Serbia and Kosovo moving closer and closer to the EU."