Europe Day in Kosovo - No Reason to Celebrate!
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The Europe Day in Kosovo was "celebrated" on 9th May. However, smiling faces are to find mainly at those who enjoyed the day off. The image of the EU in Kosovo is worse than ever. In particular the EU Rule-of-Law mission in Kosovo - EULEX - lacks results and faces an increasingly damaged reputation. Inactivity and ignorance are commonly used attributes to describe EULEX in the Kosovar public opinion over the past weeks.
In contradiction to its own objectives as well as to the proclaimed values of most EU member states, which sponsor this mission with 100 m Euro every year, EULEX is obviously not providing 'Law and Order' equally allover Kosovo. EULEX refuses to bring back Kosovar judges and prosecutors to the district court in the north of Mitrovica. Further on it tolerates rejection against Kosovar executive institutions through the Serb population. Maybe EULEX - likewise UNMIK before - claims to implement a kind of a diplomatic sensitive approach against the left behind and already frustrated Serbs, which refuse to recognize the Republic of Kosovo as their new supreme administrative instance. However, this was known before: Serbia's politicians refuse to understand, that they "lost Kosovo deservedly." Non-cooperation was the Belgrade backed 'credo' since 1999.
So respectful against Serbian frustrations on the one hand, EULEX still dared to hire a Romanian officer as the chief of EULEX police special forces on the other hand: Without considering the frustration of the Kosovo Albanian population, which remembers well the killings of two spectators at a peaceful demonstration in 2007. The responsible Romanian officers were said to have shot at protestors by using prohibited versions of gum bullets, containing a special iron core. The accused officers were broad out of the country, the case was not further investigated.
Regardless of all these "sensitivities", EULEX with its non-acting approach creates a legal vacuum and double standards, which none of the EU member states would allow to exist within its own borders. As an example on the very operational level, there is the habit in most Serb populated municipalities on Kosovar territory not to pay for energy, tax and telephone - excused by their rejection against Kosovar institutions. And nobody dares to use force: Whenever someone tries to cut unpaid services, a Belgrade orchestrated outrage against discrimination of suppressed Serbs blows the mind of pretended human thinking international EULEX and former UNMIK officers, the ruling class in Kosovo. Obviously the implementation and application of law and order is handled different by EULEX with respect to different ethnicities:
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