Eduardo González
The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, participated yesterday in Tirana in the Berlin Process Summit, in which the leaders of Spain and Kosovo coincided again in an international meeting for the second time in just ten days.
The Berlin Process Summit – an initiative launched in 2014 by then German Chancellor Angela Merkel to promote political dialogue between Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia – was attended by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Among those present was also the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti. This is the second occasion in less than two weeks that Pedro Sánchez has met a leader of this former Serbian province, whose independence, self-proclaimed in 2008, has not been recognized by Spain or by four other EU member states: Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovakia.
On October 5, Sánchez met the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, in Granada, on the occasion of the third meeting of the European Political Community. On that occasion, the Kosovar leader assured in a press conference that the independence of her country is “an irreversible reality” and, therefore, encouraged Spain to recognize it, taking into account the Spanish interest in the prosperity and stability of the Western Balkans.
At yesterday’s meeting, Kosovo was represented by Albin Kurti, who, in addition to holding a bilateral meeting with the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, intervened in the first session of the Berlin Process Summit, dedicated to the integration of the Western Balkans into the single market and to the improvement of convergence with the EU.
In his speech, Kurti denounced the “terrorist attack on Kosovo” of September 24 – which resulted in the killing of a Kosovar policeman by a Kosovo Serb commando and the subsequent death of three members of this armed group in their confrontation with the officers – whose perpetrators “still roam freely in Serbia despite publicly admitting their involvement”, and assured that “this heinous act was sponsored by Serbia, as irrefutable evidence shows.” “Twenty-five years after the genocidal campaign, and after so many rounds of dialogue, Kosovo is still threatened with invasion by Serbia,” he declared, quoted by the Kosovar government’s website.
At the same meeting, Von der Leyen warned that “it is very important that Kosovo and Serbia resume the path of normalization of their relations” because that is the “only way” to “move towards the future and for Kosovo and Serbia to become members of the European Union”. For his part, Olaf Scholz warned that “it is high time to overcome conflicts that have been going on for too long.” “The recent escalation in northern Kosovo demonstrates the importance” of this, he added.
For his part, Sánchez stated in Tirana that the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU fully supports the accession process of the Western Balkans and assured that the Union will help in the implementation of all the necessary reforms to materialize the New Growth Plan for the region, which the Commission will present before the end of the year.
Likewise, and without expressly mentioning Kosovo, he reminded the other leaders of “two main objectives” of the Berlin Process: “the resolution of pending bilateral issues and reconciliation within the societies of the region”, two objectives that “are not an end in themselves, but serve a clear purpose: to bring the region closer to the European Union”.
In July 2022, during a tour of the Western Balkans, Pedro Sanchez declared in Belgrade that Spain supports Serbia “in what has to do with Kosovo”. “Serbia and Spain are friendly countries” to which they are “united by many things”, but what unites them most is “the conviction of the need to ensure respect for international law and the sovereign integrity of States, the territorial integrity of States”, he warned. For this reason, “Spain has been and will be at Serbia’s side in the defense of these principles and will always appeal to dialogue between the parties to resolve differences, but, obviously, the territorial integrity of nations must be respected and international law must be respected”, he concluded.
