Serbia is hanging on to Kosovo

In an interview with Marc Hoch, Franz-Lothar Altmann, an expert on the Balkans, says the future status of Kosovo will be decided after the parliamentary and presidential elections in december and by the UN Security Council. According to Altmann, the low turnout in the constitutional referendum is evidence of "the growing understanding among the people of the country that Kosovo has been lost. The Serbs accept the politicians' continual arguments that Kosovo should remain a Serbian province, but this no longer the major political issue for them. For the people of Serbia the important questions now are how to improve their living standards and how to achieve EU membership. Kosovo is more of an obstacle than anything else in resolving these issues."

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