By recommending Kosovo’s admission to the Council of Europe, rapporteur Dora Bakoyannis has actually paved the way for new recognitions of Kosovo because you cannot have a unique case where a non-state, as Kosovo is, participates in international institutions without ultimately being recognized. Therefore, Bakoyannis’ proposal opens the doors for Kosovo to enter the European Union and soon be recognized as an independent country,” Panagiotis Pavlos, a research associate at the University of Oslo, tells Kosovo Online.
As he adds, according to his sources, there are even efforts for Kosovo to join NATO before the elections in the United States, or before a potential change in the American presidency.
“It is very naive to think that Bakoyannis is speaking the truth and acting for the good of the Serbian people in Kosovo, that is totally impossible,” Pavlos is convinced.
Asked whether the support for Kosovo by four members of New Democracy, the ruling party in Greece, in the vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe signals or leads to a change in Athens’ official position regarding Kosovo’s status, Pavlos says that after that vote, Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis publicly assured that Greece maintained its position against recognizing Kosovo.
“After the huge uproar that followed Bakoyannis’ actions in Strasbourg, Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis a few days ago publicly assured that Greece maintained its position against recognizing Kosovo. He also said that Greece would abstain from voting in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in May on the Kosovo case. Therefore, Greece has formally announced that it will not support further procedures for Kosovo’s admission. However, the truth is that this is not the maximum that the minister could have done, because it would have been ideal if he had said that Greece would participate in the vote and would vote against admission. That would have been an honest stance, as Spain, Romania, Slovakia, and, of course, Cyprus will do. What he said, in my view, is halfway and not the maximum that Greece should do regarding Kosovo,” Pavlos says.
The fact that most Greek MPs in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who are from New Democracy, voted for Kosovo’s admission, according to him, actually shows that this party is in favor of Kosovo’s admission to the Council of Europe.
“Although the Greek Foreign Minister said that Greece would abstain in the Committee of Ministers, what New Democracy did in practice was facilitate Kosovo’s admission. Therefore, this is a kind of political game, deceit, and an attempt to deceive the Greek public opinion on this topic,” Pavlos believes.
He reminds that Dora Bakoyannis, “out of the blue,” just two weeks after her last signal that she wouldn’t do it, proposed Kosovo’s admission to the Council of Europe.
“This, unfortunately, leads me to suspect that there are at least very significant promises, if not some concrete ‘trade-offs,’ that she was convinced to continue having a positive opinion about Kosovo’s admission because otherwise, there’s no sense why she did it,” Pavlos says.
After the vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe giving a positive opinion for Kosovo’s admission, Bakoyannis dismissed criticism that a precedent was set for other separatist entities, but Pavlos fears that there might be a “Kosovozation” of Thrace, a region in northeastern Greece.
“There we have a Muslim minority that reaches almost 50 percent of the population. I would ask Mrs. Bakoyannis why this population wouldn’t say: we are 50 percent here, we don’t want to be under the Greek state, we want to separate? So what she said I consider a way to escape sharp criticism, unless, of course, there are promises, for example, from Germany or the US that such a thing won’t happen to Greece. It’s very easy for Turkey to benefit from this precedent despite what Bakoyannis believes or wants us to believe in what she says, because I doubt she believes in what she’s saying. She says those things to defend herself. Turkey will certainly make the most of any precedent in this area. It should be clear to everyone that Turkey today is trying to revive Ottoman rule throughout the Balkans, and we can see this in Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Albania, Skopje, and of course in Greece,” Pavlos says.
Our interlocutor points out that it is a fact that Pristina is carrying out ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population in Kosovo, which, he says, leads to a “Greater Albania” that can also threaten Greece.
“Today, there are about 90,000 Serbs left in Kosovo; 250,000 left between 1999 and 2004. The Albanian regime is very aware that those who stayed are aging, that by pressuring them on their rights, young Serbs when they grow up will go to Belgrade for studies. Pristina knows that this population will weaken and fade. What will happen then when they get rid of all the remaining Serbs in Kosovo? Pristina will unify with Tirana, and then the ‘Greater Albania’ will come. Kosovo is an intermediary step towards the ‘Greater Albania,’ and we have seen maps where the ‘Greater Albania’ extends to areas in northwestern Greece. Therefore, the harm caused by Bakoyannis is not only against the Serbian people in Kosovo, but Greece could also suffer consequences,” Pavlos says.
As he points out, we are facing enormous geopolitical events that no rule of international law will prohibit.
“I will remind that the bombing of Serbia was carried out against international law, and no one banned it, it happened,” Pavlos concludes.
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