“We managed to have an agreement in Brussels on February 27, and then we agreed to sign the document (European plan) in Ohrid on March 18, once we agree on the implementation plan as well. However, in Ohrid, Serbian President (Aleksandar) Vucic submitted a letter, explaining that he cannot sign the document because of constitutional issues back in Serbia. However, we saw very soon that the idea was not constitutional complications but the fact that he wanted to publicly state that he has not accepted the agreement which he did accept,” said Kosovo's First Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi.

In an interview with Radio Gorazdevac, Bislimi, who is also Kosovo’s chief negotiator in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, said the absence of signatures on the European agreement is precisely what triggered additional complications, including the events in Banjska, KoSSev reported.

“With the event in Banjska in turned into an agreement on the path to conflict. This is very unfortunate because the agreement as such had the potential to bring us much closer,” said Bislimi.

However, on the positive side, he said that “thanks to the constructiveness of both the citizens in the four municipalities in the North and of the Government of Kosovo,” the issues of measuring the energy consumption of households in the North, and that of license plates were resolved despite all the tensions and conflicts.

Bislimi said he believes that 2023 was “very suitable” for a full implementation of the former Franco-German plan, now officially the European agreement, because it was an elections-free year, both in Kosovo and Serbia, whereas elections are due in 2024 in the US, European Union (EU) and Kosovo.

He said Pristina sees the elections recently held in Serbia as an “obstruction” in implementing the European plan that will produce further complications.

Asked when Pristina will abolish the decision on the sticker regime for Serbia-issued license plates, as was recently done by Belgrade, Bislimi reiterated Kosovo’s position:

“Once our authorities report that Serbia is fully implementing this agreement, or this decision, and I see the decision printed or published somewhere, then Kosovo will also act upon that and produce the same decision, which means that stickers will belong to the past,” he said, noting that they have not seen the decision on abolishing the stickers on the Serbian Government’s website.

“Either it’s due to the lack of transparency or it has to do with the methodology of how they publish official documents,” said Bislimi.

He confirmed that Belgrade and Pristina set up two working groups in 2021, tasked with producing a long-term permanent European-based solution on the car plates.

At the time Kosovo had a proposal: let’s recognize each other’s car plates and move on this, because both car plates are according to the EU standards. However, our proposal was not accepted by Serbia, and instead we had tensions, we had blockades, we had cars being burnt, said the Kosovo First Deputy Prime Minister.