This text is a deeply personal response to the panic that has gripped the Serbian
community in Kosovo in recent days over the status of its educational and healthcare institutions.
I understand people’s fears — they are justified. We are talking about their children, their jobs, their lives. Serbian politicians — those who should be providing answers — remain silent or mislead them with empty phrases and clichés, offering neither clear ideas nor concrete plans.
Official Belgrade, too, remains shamefully — unforgivably — silent, brushing aside this inconvenient topic at a time when it is clawing and clubbing to stay in power. This makes it painfully obvious where their priorities lie — their seats of power.
Under such circumstances, Serbs in Kosovo are rightfully anxious and worried, and they deserve at least some answers.
Amid this chaos and widespread defeatism, I will try to share what I know and what I can infer. It’s up to you to decide how much it matters to you. Here are the key facts you should know:
1. The only — absolutely the only — internationally validated plan addressing the status of education and healthcare for the Serbian community in Kosovo is the plan known as the European Path to Normalization, or more specifically, its derivative — the so-called Ohrid Agreement.
It stipulates that the Serbian community will exercise its rights (services) within a “self-management framework,” better known as the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities (ASM).
2. The draft statute of the ASM, prepared by the European Union and submitted to the Government of Kosovo for referral to the Constitutional Court, foresees education and healthcare being organized as privatized service systems under the ASM’s competence.
What does this mean in practice? It means these institutions will continue operating under the curricula and programs of Serbia’s Ministry of Education and other relevant ministries; employees will receive salaries from the budget of the Republic of Serbia (funds transferred through the Central Bank of Kosovo), while Kosovo’s legislation will recognize their work by granting them private-institution status.
3. In April 2024, ahead of the Council of Europe vote on Kosovo’s membership, the EU sent this very draft statute to the Government of Kosovo, requesting it be submitted to the Constitutional Court for a constitutionality review. Albin Kurti rejected the request.
As a result, Kosovo was excluded from the membership vote.
4. As we all know, Kosovo’s outgoing government categorically rejects both this draft and any discussion about establishing the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities. However, this does not change the EU’s position that this draft remains the sole framework for resolving collective rights of the Serbian community — including its education and healthcare systems.
Albin Kurti’s government has long been under sanctions for this refusal, and these sanctions have intensified in recent days — following the suspension of the Strategic Dialogue by the United States and silent but obvious pressure on Kosovo’s opposition to form a new government and replace Kurti.
5. Today, the formation of a new opposition government in Kosovo is not only mathematically possible but, after the U.S. sanctions, also a politically realistic option.
Such a government is expected to base itself on strategic cooperation with Western partners — the EU and the U.S. — which would most likely mean reactivating talks on the Ohrid Plan, establishing the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities, and resolving the status of educational and healthcare institutions as foreseen in the EU’s draft ASM statute.
In short, the issue of educational and healthcare institutions is not settled — nor will it be settled through Albin Kurti’s unilateral actions, despite his government’s years-long attempts. This matter cannot be addressed through the Kosovo Government’s existing pattern — using guns and police — because it is far too complex for imposed solutions.
All the more so because Kosovo’s own legislation explicitly places the right to education for non-majority communities above any legal act that might jeopardize it.
Albin Kurti has spent years seeking a legal basis to act unilaterally but has clearly not found one. If he had, he would already be shutting down schools and hospitals in Serbian areas.
This is also the context in which we should interpret Minister Rašić’s statements, which have sparked the panic within the Serbian community. Arbitrary and speculative, they reflect more of Kurti’s governing style than any concrete plan.
In other words, Minister Rašić shows no intention of critically examining his boss Albin Kurti’s actions, nor does he see it as his duty toward the people he represents.
Instead, with servile attitudes disguised as “realpolitik,” he seeks to preserve his position and the perks that come with it.
Fortunately, as things stand, this issue will not be decided by either Kurti or Rašić.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
