Four months after Kosovo declared independence on February 17 following decades of ethnic tension, genocide and war, as well as a series of failed international efforts to secure a solution to the status of Serbia’s former southern province, the Kosovar republic lived to celebrate the enactment of its basic law.

On the night of June 15, a solemn ceremony marked the entering into force of Kosovo’s constitution and while the Kosovar citizens hailed this fundamental step that their newly-born republic made on the path of state-building, the Serbian authorities were quick to condemn it.

“This is our Bible and our Koran,” Kosovar president Fatmir Sejdiu said, as quoted by website Balkan Insight. “Our constitution entails modern constitutional resolutions deriving from a democratic heritage, yet with special provisions for the circumstances and specifics of Kosovo as a multiethnic society, with its Albanian majority and other minorities, to whom the rights and privileges are given with a powerful guarantee based on the constitution,” he added.

Serbian president Boris Tadic, predictably, slammed the constitution as invalid. “Serbia does not accept the proclamation of Kosovo’s constitution as a legal fact (...) We are prepared to return to the negotiating table and we will insist on that in all international forums. That will be our strategy and our response to the declaration of the illegal, so-called country of Kosovo and Metohija, or more precisely, the state of Kosovo,” Tadic said, as quoted by Serbian broadcaster B92.

The constitution of Kosovo consists of 14 chapters and 162 articles. It defines the Kosovar republic as “independent, sovereign, democratic, unique and indivisible” and exercising its authority based on the respect for human rights and freedoms of its citizens and all other individuals within its borders. It affirms that the Kosovar state is based on the principle of separation of powers and the checks and balances among them, and provides the equality of all individuals before the law. The republic of Kosovo is declared a secular state neutral in matters of religious beliefs, with a free-competition market economy. Albanian and Serbian are proclaimed official languages.

The entering into force of the basic Kosovar law marked the inevitable shift of power from the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to the authorities of the new republic. Therefore, United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced on June 12, the UN plans to reconfigure UNMIK to make it adequate to the new situation, UN’s news centre announced. In a letter sent to presidents Tadic and Sejdiu, Ban said UNMIK would be adjusted to allow the role of the European Union to increase in the rule of law field, but still under a UN umbrella. The reconfiguration would include appointing a new UN special representative to Kosovo. The Secretary General’s letter reaffirmed UN’s “status-neutrality” stand regarding the status of Kosovo and said that the UN would engage itself in dialogue with Serbia under six topics, namely police, justice, transport and infrastructure, customs, boundary management and Serbian patrimony. 

UNMIK has been managing the troubled Balkan province ever since Nato’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 to end the ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian forces on the orders of Slobodan Milosevic. It was introduced by UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

“It is my intention to reconfigure the structure and profile of the international civil presence to one that (...) enables the European Union to assume an enhanced operational role in Kosovo in accordance with resolution 1244,” Ban wrote, as quoted by Reuters.

UN special representative to Kosovo Joachim Ruecker is due to give up his position on June 20, his most likely successor reported to be Italian diplomat Lamberto Zannier. “UNMIK will remain in Kosovo with limited authority (...) The UN will continue to play its role in Kosovo as long as Resolution 1244 remains in force, which is clear from the UN Secretary General’s letter (...), but will adjust to the changed circumstances,” Ruecker said, as quoted by B92.

The UN Security Council is meeting on June 20 to discuss Ban’s plan.

As far as the increased role of the EU in Kosovo envisaged in Ban’s plan is concerned, its future now seems quite vague. The deployment of the 2200-strong EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, the EULEX, failed to meet its June 15 deadline and will continue over the months to come. The EULEX was designed as a continuation of UNMIK’s presence in Kosovo.

Serbia and Russia, who is fully supporting Belgrade in its refusal to recognise an independent Kosovo, have claimed EULEX as illegal as it was not envisaged in Resolution 1244 and was not backed by any official UN decision. Moreover, Russia, as one of the five veto-wielding powers on the UN Security Council, has vowed to block any resolution to Serbia’s detriment.

And the commentary of the Russian ministry of foreign affairs regarding the enactment of the Kosovo constitution hardly voiced a stance softer than the one Russia has been adhering to over the past several months. “This act is a sequel to the chain of actions undertaken in the arbitrary legalisation of sovereignty for the province and to a line on violating the norms of international law, which only aggravates the tense situation in Kosovo and the isolation of the Serbian population not recognising Kosovo’s unilaterally proclaimed independence,” it said. “Unacceptable are the statements of Pristina, which are being made in the context of the ‘constitution’, that the Kosovo Albanian leadership intends to wind down co-operation with UNMIK. By the same token, one of the parties is in gross breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which assigns a central role to the UN in Kosovo settlement. Any change of the mandate, reformatting of the international presences and the deployment of an EU mission in the province, of which there has been much talk in the last few days, should be carried out with the consent of the parties involved and subject to the approval of the UN Security Council. We call for restoring legality in Kosovo affairs since a different path is fraught with adverse consequences for regional security and international stability,” the statement said.