BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Serbia and Kosovo have settled an ethnic dispute over the movement of citizens across their border, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday.
“We have a deal,” Borrell said in a tweet. “Under the EU-facilitated Dialogue, Serbia agreed to abolish entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders and Kosovo agreed to not introduce them for Serbian ID holders.”
“Kosovo Serbs, as well as all other citizens, will be able to travel freely between Kosovo & Serbia using their ID cards. The EU just received guarantees from PM (Albin) Kurti to this end,” he wrote.
The dispute stemmed from predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, something Belgrade has refused to recognise.
Belgrade and Kosovo’s Serb minority concentrated in the country’s north claim entitlement under a 2013 agreement to an association of semi-autonomous majority-Serb municipalities, which Pristina has refused to implement.
(Reporting by John Chalmers; Editing by Edmund Blair)
