THE (UNCERTAIN) FUTURE OF KOSOVO’S COMMUNITY OF SERB MUNICIPALITIES: ANOTHER

Considering the aftermath of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion, the consequences of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and the stalemate in the implementation of the 2013 Kosovo-Serbia Brussels Agreement, this analysis evaluates the current political crisis in Kosovo and BiH and advances the following arguments. [...] In the 2010 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ rejected any legal similarity between Kosovo’s 2008 independence and the potential secession of the RS entity from BiH.1 Nevertheless, the 2013 Brussels Agreement has complicated matters for Kosovo and the international architects of the 2013 deal, as the similarities between CSM and RS have resurfaced. [...] While Serb nationalists initially considered the signing of the DPA as a categorical loss, the incorporation of the RS entity into BiH has since been recast as the “greatest Serbian victory of the 20th century,” while the state boundary line between BiH and Serbia has been redubbed “provisional line between the two Serb states.”16 The governments in RS and Belgrade also echo such claims during the. [...] Firstly, the focus of the US and EU criticism of the Kosovo government was the non-implementation of the CSM. [...] S.’ lack of effective commitment to the integrity of the DPA.34 Accordingly, despite the purported limits on the CSM’s institutional authorities and the pledges of individual American and European diplomats, Kosovo’s government cannot but see the contours of the RS entity in the proposed CSM.35 CONCLUSION At its core, this analysis examined the chasm that exists between legal-institutional desires.