Redrawing the Borders between Kosovo and Serbia: Nationalists’ Fuel or a Rational Solution with the Promise of a European Future?
Redrawing the Borders between Kosovo and Serbia: Nationalists’ Fuel or a Rational Solution with the Promise of a European Future?

Summary/Abstract: The tentative idea that the Serbian minority that lives in the Northern part of Kosovo and the Albanian minority that lives in the Presevo valley, Serbia, has so far provoked very conflicting reactions both domestically and internationally. The underlying idea of this paper is to analyze if the land swap could bear any real benefit for the ethnic minorities in the two countries that would get reattached to their ethnic kin by looking at the demographic map of the territories that are to get swapped. This paper delves deeper into the role of the EU with the Brussels agreement, as a potential factor, proposing that the land swap might be just a typical case of “stabilitocracy,” at the cost of democracy, instead of a long-lasting solution to an old problem. Finally, the paper presents a rather pessimistic picture about the future of the remaining ethnic minorities in both Serbia and Albania if the land swap agreement does take place at the end. Thus, if it is put into effect, it would neither end the entrenched stabilitocratic principles within the EU nor would it benefit the overall minority Serb population in Kosovo.

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