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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Drafting of ZSO Statute sole responsibility of Management Team

Belgrade, 16 January 2023

Director of the Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija Petar Petkovic said today that the drafting of the Statute of the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) is the exclusive competence of the Management Team for establishment of the ZSO, as precisely prescribed by the agreements reached in dialogue in Brussels in 2013 and 2015, so there is no single legal basis or reason for this work to be carried out by any non-governmental organisation or any other entity.

Petkovic stated that this is unequivocally clear from Article B point 2 of the Agreement entitled "Scope and mandate of the management team for the establishment of the ZSO" from 2013, which states that the drafting of the Statute of the ZSO is the exclusive competence of the Management Team.

This is also confirmed by Article 21 of the General Principles from 2015, which states that "the ZSO Statute will be compiled by the Management Team and will be presented to a high-level dialogue within four months", noted Petkovic.

According to his words, the attempt for any non-governmental organisation to assume responsibility for drafting the ZSO Statute represents a direct move of rendering the dialogue meaningless and violation of the agreements that defined this issue.

To be quite precise, no one from the Management Team requested the services of the "Friedrich Ebert" organisation for the drafting of the ZSO Statute, because that work was entrusted exclusively to the Management Team, as confirmed by the European Union report from April 2018. In accordance with the entrusted mandate, the Management Team finished drafting the Draft Statute almost 5 years ago, more precisely in August 2018, and officially informed the EU about it, the Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija pointed out.

Petkovic recalled that until today, the European Union has not fulfilled its obligation and convened a high-level dialogue where the Management Team would present the Draft Statute.