26 February 2020 – Kosovo-Serbia Public Policy Advocacy Group (KSPAG) held a conference on 26 February2020 in Belgrade’s Media Centre, where it presented a booklet of articles on the technical dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. The publication is a collection of articles that analyse the benefits of technical agreements between Belgrade and Pristina.

At the beginning, the president of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, Sonja Licht, emphasized that the trilingual publication aims to bring the dialogue closer to the citizens, who still need it. According to Licht, the goal of the KSPAG project is to help citizens from both communities to understand what is truly affecting their lives, and how the agreements, from those related to the energy sector to those facilitating regional cooperation, can change their everyday lives.

She mentioned an article by a member of the Roma community from Mitrovica that describes how difficult it was for him to get the most basic documents before the agreement.

The KSPAG articles, published in the past year and a half in the media in Kosovo and Serbia, highlighted the effect that the technical agreements have had on citizens, as well as the achievements of technical dialogue in normalizing relations between the two parties.

The authors, citizens and experts from Serbia and Kosovo, shared their personal views and experiences on the positive results of a series of technical dialogue agreements. One of them was Jovana Radosavljevic, from the NGO New Social Initiative, from North Mitrovica who was present at the publication event.

Speaking about the agreement on freedom of movement, Radosavljevic pointed out that before 2011 it was hard to travel within Kosovo or to Serbia, but today the context has changed because there are institutions and coexistence has been promoted.

However, she said there are still problems with license plates and the issue of documents and passports for Serbs in Kosovo. “We still see some small technical issues and problems that affect people’s lives”, she said.

The editor of the European Western Balkans portal, Nikola Burazer, who wrote the text on the agreement on regional representation of Kosovo, stated that the unplanned meetings of the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo ten years ago were followed with controversy, and today things have changed. “Today, it’s normal for politicians to meet”, Burazer said.

At the conference, the print edition of the publication was delivered to the representatives of different NGOs, institutions, individuals and media.

This event and activity are made possible with the support of the European Union. The content of this activity and publication is the sole responsibility of the Kosovo-Serbia Policy and Advocacy Group and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.