Shadow Report on the Kosovo-Serbia Normalisation Process - Between Agreement Implementation and Managing Tensions
Shadow Report on the Kosovo-Serbia Normalisation Process - Between Agreement Implementation and Managing Tensions

Author(s): Miloš Pavković, Fitim Gashi
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, International relations/trade, Inter-Ethnic Relations, EU-Approach / EU-Accession / EU-Development
Published by: Centar za evropske politike CEP
Keywords: Kosovo-Serbia normalisation; Brussels–Ohrid Agreement; European Union mediation; Normalisation Index; Agreement implementation; Western Balkans; EU accession
Summary/Abstract: This Shadow Report is the first independent, jointly produced assessment of the Agreement on the Path to Normalisation implementation, written simultaneously from Belgrade and Pristina. Its central contribution is the Normalisation Index – an original, replicable twin-component tool measuring implementation of each Agreement and Annex commitment by Serbia, Kosovo, and the EU, and (2) the engagement of the EU and the United States across four phases between 2023 and 2026. The Report combines the Index with structured fieldwork, focus groups, and desk research to identify six structural challenges behind the implementation gap, and translates them into five sets of actor-specific recommendations for the EU, the US, Serbia, Kosovo, and civil society. Its overarching finding is stark: three years after Ohrid, overall Agreement implementation stands at just 21.1%, driven far more by external EU facilitation than by genuine political will on either side. The normalisation process has stalled not because political will is temporarily absent, but because the architecture of the process: unsigned commitments, ambiguous language, weak conditionality, and asymmetric incentives: has made non-implementation rational for both governments and unenforceable for the facilitator.

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