EU Demands Immediate Halt to Gazivode Demolitions
The EU mission in Pristina has called for an immediate halt to further demolitions at Lake Gazivode, after Ibar-Lepenac workers razed 11 cottages while owners had already gone to court.
- Workers from the public company Ibar-Lepenac arrived at Lake Gazivode on July 21 and razed 11 cottages, giving owners just half an hour to leave the buildings.
- The EU mission in Pristina on July 22 demanded an immediate halt to further demolitions and urged authorities to weigh lawful solutions.
- Brussels notes the demolitions went ahead while owners had already launched legal action within the 15-day window.
- Five civil society groups wrote to the World Bank over Ibar-Lepenac's conduct around Gazivode.
The European Union mission in Pristina on July 22 called for an immediate halt to further demolitions at Lake Gazivode, a day after workers from the public company Ibar-Lepenac razed 11 cottages in the north of Kosovo. Owners, according to accounts from the scene, were given just half an hour to remove their belongings and leave the properties before the machines went to work.
The mission said the structures were removed even though affected residents had already initiated legal proceedings within the statutory 15-day window. Brussels urged the authorities in Pristina to contact owners and municipalities without delay and to seek lawful solutions, rather than measures that cannot be undone once carried out.
Why is Brussels invoking the rule of law?
The mission’s central objection concerns the sequence of events. When legal proceedings are already under way, demolishing property before a dispute is resolved raises serious questions of the rule of law, proportionality and property rights, in the EU’s assessment. Removing a building while a court has yet to rule effectively empties any later outcome of meaning, since a razed cottage is not restored by any verdict.
The mission also singled out the role of the Kosovo Police, saying it must stay within its legal mandate. This is an assessment that applies not to a single case but to a pattern of conduct recorded on several occasions since February this year, when similar property removals in the north of Kosovo began to accelerate.
The pressure does not come from Brussels alone. Five civil society organizations wrote to the World Bank over Ibar-Lepenac’s handling of works and removals around Gazivode, asking that the manner in which they are carried out be reviewed. That shifts the cottage dispute onto the terrain of international financial institutions, rather than leaving it a purely local administrative procedure.
Selective enforcement in the north
Official Pristina presents the removals as action against illegal construction, citing the 15-day appeal window it granted. The cottage owners, mostly Kosovo Serbs, and part of the civil sector see in this a selective enforcement of the rules and a blow to Serb property around the lake, carried out precisely while legal remedies had not yet been exhausted.
The tension is underscored by an incident on July 21, when an explosion was reported at the site, damaging at least two passenger vehicles. The circumstances of that event remain to be clarified, but it fits a picture of an increasingly strained atmosphere along the Gazivode shoreline, where administrative measures and security incidents overlap.
Gazivode is not merely a question of eleven razed buildings. The lake is a strategic water and energy resource, and any decision on property along its banks carries political weight far greater than the surface of the plots. That is why the reaction from Brussels and civil society reaches beyond the individual owners and becomes a test of whether the law is applied equally to all in the north of Kosovo.
Will the European Union’s demand actually stop further demolitions, or will the machines keep working before the courts have their say?
