Pack: EU has orchestrated Kosovo’s secession
The head of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Southeastern Europe, German MEP Doris Pack, wrote in the latest issue of the Europe’s World journal that the EU had “orchestrated” Kosovo’s secession.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The EU "had to take a decision and start to orchestrate a peaceful transition culminating into the most sustainable solution for Kosovo and the region: the supervised independence as predicted in the plan drawn up by Marti Ahtisaari", Pack wrote.
"The relationship between Serbia and the EU should not depend on the EU's position over Kosovo. I hope that the political powers in Serbia will soon accept that the Kosovo issue belongs to the past and that it should not prevent Serbia from developing its relations with the EU. The Union has not changed its policy towards Belgrade and wants to see both Serbia and Kosovo as its full members", the German MEP underlined.
Pack was presiding last week the meeting of the Kosovo-EP interparliamentary delegation during which the flag of "independent Kosovo" was hanged for the first time in an EU institution.
Commenting on Pack's article in the issue of "Europe's World", the correspondent of German newspaper Handelsblatt Eric Bonse said "it was not the EU but the United States that paved the way when it decided that Kosovo should be granted independence".
"The Americans had in fact taken the decision soon after the Kosovo war of 1999. And although the Europeans were at first reluctant, they finally followed. Comme d'habitude, Britain was the first EU country to allign itself with the American decision, and in 2007, after some hesitation, Germany, France and Italy went along too. The so-called "Quitnted" the US, Germany, France, the UK and Italy - a new ‘stransatlantic' format especially created for the occasion - successfully put pressure on the Slovenian EU presidency to take the same view", Bonse wrote.
However, today "nobody knows how to put the pieces together, and even the "Quintet" is helpless".
"Instead of dealing with the relatively small problem of Kosovo, the EU now has to deal with the much bigger and thornier problem of Serbia. And even for Kosovo, the outlook is far from bright. Because of the unrelenting opposition of Serbia and Russia, the new state will not be able to join international organizations like the United Nations and the IMF. It will be largely dependent on EU aid, and in the meantime nobody knows if the new entity is really viable, or if it is going to be a ‘failed state' whose economy will go on being largely based on corruption and organised crime", Bonse wrote.
