BELGRADE: The European Union on Monday named a new envoy to lead long-stalled talks between Kosovo and Serbia, as tensions continue to flare between the archrivals.
Danish diplomat Peter Sorensen will take up the post of EU special representative for the Serbia and Kosovo dialogue beginning in February, according to the bloc.
“The tasks of the new EU special representative will be to facilitate the dialogue that will contribute to a comprehensive normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo,” the EU said in a statement.
Sorensen will be taking the reins from Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, who has held the post since 2020.
Sorensen will be charged with helping revive stalled negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, after talks between the two sides all but collapsed in March 2023 during a summit in North Macedonia.
It was there that the two sides failed to sign a normalisation agreement that sought to break a years-long diplomatic deadlock following Kosovo’s independence declaration in 2008.
Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since the war between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s in what was the a breakaway Serbian province.
Kosovo later declared independence, a move that Serbia has never acknowledged.
Sorensen, 57, is a diplomatic veteran in the Western Balkans and spent six years working in Kosovo following the war and another five in Serbia, along with stints in Bosnia and North Macedonia.
