The wasteland of Kosovo’s lawlessness: The energy epilogue

By Dragutin Nenezić

The Arnauts cannot imagine any force that is above their own, power above their power, and thus neither power nor fist, nor rifle nor cannon has ever been made, with which their violence could be suppressed.

„There, see, that’s the one who killed this one, and this one, there the other day“ – some kind of clerk will tell you.

„Well, for God’s sake, he comes to the markets in Pristina so freely?!“

„Well, you know, he’s an Arnaut!“

And you now know that Arnaut is a „free citizen“ (in the literal sense of the word „free“) of the vast domain of the empire.

Branislav Nušić, 1890

After 2023, there is no doubt anymore – Kosovo and Metohija cannot avoid the eternal return of the same, so we witnessed the recycling of the Kolasin and Pasjana affairs, and in the field of energy, which I am writing about today, we are witnessing the replay of this Nušić’s writings, now performed by Albin Kurti and his entourage.

I already wrote about energy in 2021 and 2022, so for a better understanding of the situation, I recommend re-reading those texts, since they haven’t aged too badly.

Also, in the meantime, the following has happened in the past months and weeks:

• At the end of 2023, the so-called commercial contract was concluded between KEDS and Elektrosever, of course with façade-like and traditional distancing on the part of Belgrade that this does not prejudge the issue of property – thus masking the fact that this issue can now only be discussed within the Pristina system;

• From January 1st, 2024, the north of Kosovo has been almost completely and technically integrated into the electric power system of Pristina;

• Finally, the conditions have been created to start considering the problem of debt collection in northern Kosovo for electricity consumed in the past period (i.e. since the beginning of the integration into the Pristina system), but in a way that is not entirely clear – currently, in the absence of publicly available information, it seems that debt collection from the development fund is only being considered, but that it is not technically possible without the consent of the EU representative in the management board of that fund.

With these events, an era in the field of energy, in which this issue was the subject of the Brussels process, ended, and a new one began, in which it will be an exclusively internal issue of Pristina, even though the functioning of another „daughter company“ is presented as a success in some places. In fact, now, as was the case with telecommunications, the full force of Pristina’s lawlessness, against which there is currently no effective barrier, will become evident. Therefore, the epilogue of this negotiation episode is similar to others that have happened or are yet to happen – Pristina’s sovereignty is extended to the entire territory of Kosovo and Metohija, and Serbs are assigned the role of mere subjects.

Therefore, at this point, I would like not to look back at what has been completed, but to briefly analyze what is in progress or what may happen in the not-so-distant future.

First of all, it is clear that the billing will move in two directions – regular, which concerns the energy that will be consumed in the future, and extraordinary, which will concern the energy that was consumed in the past period. As far as the regular is concerned, at the end of January, everything that is not quite clear right now will be revealed – who are the consumers, how their bills will be regulated, and how they will be paid. As for the extraordinary billing, the situation is much worse.

First, it is clear that, as I wrote earlier, Pristina will play with numbers, and absolutely no one can stop this now. From December 27 to January 5, somehow, from a debt of 11.8 million, a debt of 30.7 million euros was brought to the fore! What the final figure will be, we can only guess…

Secondly, the collection of that lump sum debt in the way that is mentioned to the public is absolutely illegal. Pristina conducts its budget accounting on a cash basis, which in this particular case means that debts such as this cannot be collected by simple redistribution of existing – and even special-purpose – funds.

For example, for the collection of this debt from the funds of the Development Fund, the consent of the EU representative in its management board is not enough, it is also necessary that there is a connection between this debt and the purpose for which these funds can be used. It could eventually be an enforceable court judgment, but it requires the court to determine the basis of the fund’s liability for the debts of currently unknown consumers, who, at the time when those debts were formally incurred, did not even have the status of consumers.

In other words, any diversion of funds from the fund to pay phantom electricity debt is a criminal offense.

Thirdly, there is absolutely no way that, once this practice is established, the collection does not extend to the debt that the Pristina government willingly assumed and paid in the past, as well as to use any other public funds in addition to the funds of the Development Fund (based on a text in Koha – which is unusually precise only when it deals with pseudo-history – it is not clear whether this has actually already happened). And that will certainly constitute a criminal offense, at least until the current budget system of Pristina is changed.

Of course, all this will not prevent Kurti from manifesting his obvious Napoleonic complex by carrying out his „civilizing“ mission on the Serbs from Northern Kosovo. Or, as he himself says: „If you want to be a decent citizen, I will help you by all means.“

The fact that Pristina does not know its own regulations, nor does it know how to implement them, is less important – what is important is that the Serbs, as mere subjects, suffer everything that the Pristina government invents. And it is important that northern Kosovo, for lack of better words, is „southernized“ or „enclavinized“, and means to do so are not chosen – legal, political, or special purposes budget… all in order to break the spine of the Serbs there, once and for all, and all under the guise of „decency“, and by those who themselves possess no decency. It is up to the Serbs to try to find an adequate answer for that.

The situation with the ban on the import of goods from Serbia proper is similar to this on several grounds – it is clearly illegal, because there is no formal decision on the ban, and its impact on the economy of northern Kosovo and the existence of Serbs is catastrophic. Perhaps the solution to the situation in the field of energy lies in organizing like the one currently being done by businessmen in the north.

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