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EU foreign policy chief announces visit to Kosovo and Serbia: Dialogue must continue

EU foreign policy chief announces visit to Kosovo and Serbia: Dialogue must

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has announced that she will visit Kosovo and Serbia sometime next month.

After the Foreign Affairs Council meeting on April 14 in Luxembourg, Kallas told a press conference that the visit would come "later in May."


"As for Serbia and Kosovo, it is clear that the normalization of their relations is of the utmost importance. For this reason, the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina must continue," Kallas said.

Kosovo applied for EU membership in December 2022. However, this application has not yet been reviewed by the authorities in Brussels. Kosovo is also the only one in the region that does not have candidate country status.

Due to the crises in northern Kosovo, which increased tensions between the two countries, no round of political dialogue has taken place in Brussels since September 2023, but there have only been talks at the level of chief negotiators.

Finally, Kallas had said that the EU is interested in seeing progress towards normalizing relations between the two countries, whether through the Dialogue or some other means.


"Maybe it's dialogue, maybe it's another tool. I'm ready to look into this issue, and I will do so together with the Special Representative [for dialogue, Peter Sorensen] in the coming days."

During the conference on April 14, Kallas also discussed the enlargement process and the possible integration of the Western Balkan states into the European Union.

Of the countries in the Western Balkans region – Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro – Kosovo is the last in terms of its journey towards the EU, after applying for membership in 2022.

"If we look at the map, the Western Balkans are in Europe geographically, they should also be in the European Union and for this reason the enlargement process is very important and we should move forward with it," Kallas said.

She said that Albania and Montenegro are making good strides and that she hopes that these two countries can be considered "success stories."/REL

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