Kurti Seeks EU Candidate Status at Kallas Lunch in New York

Kaja Kallas hosted a working lunch for Western Balkan leaders in New York on September 23, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The meeting had been announced back on September 18, and once it wrapped up, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti used a Facebook post to renew his call for the European Union to grant Pristina candidate status without further delay.

Seated at the same table as Kurti were North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, Montenegro’s President Jakov Milatovic, Albania’s Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Marko Djuric, and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Dino Konakovic.

What did Kurti ask Brussels for?

Kurti pointed out that Kosovo filed its membership application on December 15, 2022, in Prague, and that almost three years on, it still has not received a formal response. He argued that Kosovo is fully aligned with the EU’s foreign and security policy and warned that further delay would, in his words, encourage destabilizing actors in the region.

“Delaying the request submitted in December 2022 in Prague, while we are fully aligned with the EU’s foreign and security policy and have made significant progress in nearly every area, would not only be an injustice to the Republic of Kosovo, but would also send a message of encouragement to destabilizing actors in the region and beyond,” Kurti wrote in the post.

In the same message, he accused Serbia of shielding and glorifying people convicted of war crimes, of refusing to cooperate on the search for missing persons, and of violating the rights of Albanians in what he called the Presevo Valley, referring to Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja. Kurti was accompanied on the trip by Presevo municipality president Ardita Sinani and Serbian parliament MP Saip Kamberi.

“Kosovo should not, and must not, be held hostage by its northern neighbor,” Kurti said.

Konakovic raises the issue of Mladic’s burial

The lunch at Kallas’s table was not only about Kosovo’s bid. According to accounts from the meeting, Konakovic raised the issue of Ratko Mladic’s state-honored burial in Serbia, arguing that the institutional glorification of convicted war criminals cannot be brushed aside on a country’s path toward the European Union.

Kallas had already met separately with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and with Kurti the day before, on September 22, and had touched on the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina even before the lunch took place. She said then that the agreements reached through the EU-facilitated dialogue, above all the Ohrid Agreement, remain binding on both sides. The Ohrid Agreement, which she referenced, was reached on March 18, 2023, in Ohrid, North Macedonia, while a separate Agreement on the Path to Normalization had been reached slightly earlier, on February 27 of that same year in Brussels; the two are distinct documents from the same dialogue process.

“It’s time to move forward,” the EU’s high representative said after her separate talks with Vucic and Kurti.

The Kallas lunch was one of several meetings Vucic held in New York this week ahead of his address to the UN General Assembly, which this portal has covered separately. For now, Kurti’s request for candidate status remains without a concrete deadline for a response from Brussels.