FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron called today on both Belgrade and Pristina to show responsibility to calm simmering tensions and warned Paris could review Kosovo’s visa-free travel for EU in 2024 otherwise.  

Last month’s shooting in Kosovo’s volatile north near border with Serbia, that killed a Kosovo police officer, triggered one of the gravest escalations for years in the ethnic Albanian-majority former Serbian breakaway province.  

It is Serbian President Aleksandar “Vucic’s responsibility to condemn in the strongest possible terms the September 24 actions” and “help restore calm at the border”, Macron told a press conference in Tirana referring to the violence.  

A close Vucic ally had at first admitted to leading the Serb commando that ambushed a Kosovo police patrol, but then denied it when questioned by prosecutors in Belgrade.  

Even before the shooting, tensions had been high in Kosovo’s north for months, after Pristina’s decision in May to install ethnic Albanian mayors in four Serb-majority municipalities.  

That had followed a Serb boycott of the local elections a month earlier.  

Macron said expectations from both Belgrade and Pristina were “simple” and cited organising new elections in the four Serb-majority municipalities, participation of ethnic Serbs in the vote as well as Kosovo’s recognition of an association of Serb-majority municipalities, that would operate with a certain autonomy.  

“I expect a spirit of responsibility from the Serbian president, and I expect the same from the Kosovar president and prime minister,” Macron said.  

He warned France could review Kosovo’s visa-free travel into the European Union, due to enter into force on January 1, if the two sides made no progress in easing tensions.  

“I say it very clearly, we have made a gesture of trust on the visa issue. As far as France is concerned, this is conditional on keeping your word, and today that word has not been kept.”  

The clash in the north was just the latest of a series of incidents there since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.  

Belgrade – and key allies China and Russia – have refused to recognise Kosovo’s independence.  

Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since a war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s that drew Nato intervention against Belgrade. – AFP, October 17, 2023.