EU holds emergency meeting with Serbia and Kosovo over rising tensions

 European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, September 28, 2022. REUTERS FILE PHOTO

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Monday will hold an emergency meeting with the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti to discuss the rising tension between the two countries.

“I am convening an emergency meeting of the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue tomorrow with Prime Minister @albinkurti and President @predsednikrs,” the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a tweet late on Sunday.

An almost two-year-long dispute over license plates has stoked tensions between Serbia and its former breakaway province which declared independence in 2008 and is home to a Serb minority in the north backed by Belgrade.

Hundreds of police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other state workers from the Serb minority quit their jobs earlier this month after the government in Pristina ruled that local Serbs must finally replace their car plates, issued by Serbia’s unrecognized authorities in Kosovo, with Kosovo state ones.

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