The European Weekly is your weekly update on major events in European politics, giving you a quick and easy summary of this week’s big stories!

The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy reading this, like, subscribe, share it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

This week

🇽🇰French and German Diplomatic Efforts in Kosovo
📉Eurozone Inflation Drops to 6.1%
💶ECB Prepares to Share its Digital Euro
⚖️EU Court Overrules Aid to Italian Airlines

French and German Diplomatic Efforts in Kosovo

Pristina, the capital of Kosovo (Image by Leonhard Niederwimmer from Pixabay)

This week saw awful scenes in northern Kosovo, where following local elections, ethnic Albanian mayors took office in the Serbian-majority areas. Ethnic Serbians boycotted these elections, leading to a very low turnout and a result that displeased many.

This situation led to violent protests and riots in the region, leading to 30 peacekeeping soldiers and 50 Serbian protestors being injured in clashes. NATO subsequently declared that it would send 700 additional troops to control the situation.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, blamed on “fascist mobs” and “fascist militia”, to whom he refused to surrender. He, furthermore, defended the mayors despite their low legitimacy:

“These are administrative, technical mayors who are necessary for smooth functioning of municipalities … I acknowledge that the political legitimacy of these mayors is low, however, the legitimacy of others is zero.”

This flare in ethnic tensions in northern Kosovo has led to diplomatic efforts by France and Germany to alleviate and resolve the situation.

Speaking at the European Political Community summit in Moldova, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz questioned the legitimacy of the previous elections.

They called for new mayoral elections in four municipalities in northern Kosovo, stressing that the four mayors were elected with less than 5% of the vote and that they did not believe this condition was justified. Emmanuel Macron, notably, had this to say:

🇪🇺European Weekly - Kosovo efforts…

Comments on this post are for paid subscribers