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Attempts by the EU to ease the serious tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have so far failed. Unfortunately, Kosovo’s head of government, Albin Kurti, did not accept a de-escalation proposal during mediation talks in Brussels on Monday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after about eight hours of failed negotiations. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, on the other hand, is said to have supported him.

According to Borrell, the EU proposal offered a compromise to resolve the conflict over a new registration plate regulation from the Kosovo government. This recently even meant that police officers from the EU mission Eulex had to provide security in the mainly Serb-inhabited northern part of Kosovo. Serbian police officers in northern Kosovo had previously resigned from the Kosovo Police in protest at the ordinance.

The new license plate regulation of the government in Pristina stipulates that license plates from Serbia can no longer be used in Kosovo. The measure affects several thousand Kosovo Serbs in the Serbian enclave around the town of Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, who often still use vehicles with Serbian number plates. In addition, travelers from Serbia must also exchange their license plates at the border for provisional Kosovo license plates.

With the regulation, Kosovo responds to the fact that Serbia, in turn, does not recognize the number plates that Kosovo introduced after the declaration of independence in 2008. According to Borrell, the compromise proposed by the EU stipulated, among other things, that the authorities in Kosovo should suspend measures to enforce the rules. Serbia, on the other hand, must undertake not to issue new number plates to people living in Kosovo.

The EU has been trying for years to clarify the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo. This is extremely difficult because Kosovo, now almost exclusively inhabited by Albanians, split from Serbia in 1999 with NATO help and declared independence in 2008. More than 100 countries, including Germany, recognized Kosovo’s independence. Others, including Serbia, Russia, China and five EU countries, have not done so to this day. (sda/dpa)