TIRANA – Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti will travel to Paris and Brussels this week for a series of meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and a virtual summit hosted by the leaders of France and Germany.
On Monday, EU spokesperson Peter Stano confirmed that Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will visit Brussels on July 12 to re-start the stalled EU-facilitated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia.
“The summit will be hosted by EU High Representative Josep Borrell in the presence of the special envoy for the dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak,” Stano stated, adding that “all open issues” concerning the normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia will be discussed.
The announcement that the Summit is planned was announced at the end of March, with the indication that it will take place when the conditions for the continuation of the dialogue and the overcoming of the COVID-19 crisis are met.
Back then, Macron and Merkel announced in a joint statement that the plan was to hold the Summit in Paris with the participation of the leaders of both parties and High Representative of the Union Josep Borrell.
The resumption of the dialogue will be preceded by a meeting in Paris between Hoti and French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, and a virtual summit held between Hoti, Macron, Vucic and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 10.
Vučić was supposed to meet with the President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi in the White House on 27 June in a round of dialogue mediated by Special Representative Richard Grenell. The meeting failed following the announcement of indictment against Thaçi by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in the Hague.
According to a press release issued by the Kosovo Government on Monday, Tuesday’s meeting between Hoti and Macron “shows the care and dedication of President Macron towards Kosovo and its Euroatlantic future.”
The EU-facilitated dialogue, which began in 2011, was suspended in November 2018 following the imposition of a 100 percent tariff increase on imports entering Kosovo from Serbia./Compiled from wires
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