CoE Committee of Ministers meet: What about the so-called Kosovo? "It will take time"

CoE Committee of Ministers meet: What about the so-called Kosovo? "It will take time"

State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nemanja Starović, says that Italy, which is chairing the Committee, did not include Pristina's request for membership in today's draft session agenda. This, he says, does not mean that it cannot happen that at the very beginning of the session, when determining the agenda, some of the member states propose that the topic be included.

Nemanja Starović states for RTS that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, Nikola Selaković, is also attending the session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Turin.

"We will do everything in our power to protect the vital national interests of Serbia," Starovic emphasized.

He adds that, even if at some point, even today, the CoE Committee initiates this accession procedure for the interim institutions from Pristina by a two-thirds majority, that process is extremely demanding, complicated and takes an extremely long time.

"So the Committee of Ministers transfers it to the competence of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, there is also a two-thirds majority. The Parliamentary Assembly transfers it to three competent committees, which then discuss, and everything returns to the Parliamentary Assembly to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe", explained Starović.

All this procedure, given the practice so far, as he assessed, cannot technically last less than a year, and it is very likely that it can last much longer.