The seven “technical” agreements were reached during the period March 2011-February 2012, before the beginning of the political dialogue at the level of Prime Ministers began in October 2012. This paper is focused solely on Kosovo, and it looks at the steps that the national institutions have taken to implement the agreements.

The Kosovo-Serbia dialogue has been a polarizing subject in Kosovo, and has dominated the internal political debate over the last two and half years. Unlike the political dialogue, which has a broader political support, the technical dialogue had pitted the entire opposition, civil society and independent media in the country against the process and thus against the Government. At the same time, the Government, unable to own the process and take leadership in it, saw the dialogue as the only means to show its “pro-europeanness” and gain some credibility in Brussels and EU member states. When the technical dialogue began, Kosovo had just elected a central government, tarnished by the massive abuse of national elections of 2010, and stigmatized by the CoE report on organ trafficking. Against this background, the dialogue with Belgrade and the cooperativeness of Kosovo was the only option for the governing leadership to gain some credibility with the European Union.

The dialogue became the main measuring and conditional tool of the EU to measure the progress of both Kosovo and Serbia towards the EU, and the principal “carrot and stick” policy of the West to see “normalization” of relations between Prishtina and Belgrade, including their behavior in the process and the implementation of the reached agreements.

The period covered for the monitoring of the implementation of the agreements was December 2012 – May 2013.

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