

A Lufthansa Airbus A319-100 at Riga International Airport in Latvia, January 17, 2020. Photo:EPA-EFE/TOMS KALNINS

Serbian, Kosovo and NATO leaders on Monday welcomed the signing of an agreement to reopen the air link between Pristina and Belgrade that was broken 21 years ago.

US diplomats oversaw the signing of the agreement in Berlin, which will mean flights being operated by Lufthansa’s budget carrier, Eurowings.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci described the development as important. “This is an important step for the movement of citizens & normalization process,” Thaci said on Twitter, thanking the US special envoy to the Serbia-Kosovo talks, Richard Grenell, and the US National Security Adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, for facilitating the process.

The two countries are presently only connected by bus, with the ride from capital to capital lasting around six hours.

The initiative to open #Kosovo’s third civilian air route for commercial flights w/ #Serbia, after #Albania & #Macedonia, is a giant step fwd in advancing good neighborly relations & consolidating #Kosovo’s sovereignty. Grateful to @robertcobrien, @RichardGrenell and @lufthansa. — Ramush Haradinaj (@haradinajramush) January 20, 2020

The director of the Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, also confirmed the news to Serbia’s public broadcaster, RTS. “In addition to 12 regular bus routes daily, Belgrade and Pristina could soon be connected by an airline, for the first time in 20 years,” he said.

Djuric also said that the route could come to life after Kosovo abolishes the tariffs it has imposed on products from Serbia and continues the stalled EU-led dialogue on normalisation of relations.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg greeted the agreement as “an important step, which will make the circulation of people and goods easier and faster within the Western Balkans region”.

US National Security Adviser O’Brien said the agreement was a “historic deal,” calling commercial air links the “lifeblood of a modern economy.”

The restoration of an air bridge between Pristina and Belgrade, broken as the Kosovo conflict escalated in the late-1990s, will not in itself ease difficulties caused by the fact that Serbia does not recognise the statehood of its former province, which declared independence in 2008.

As Serbia does not recognise either Kosovo documents or a state border, foreign nationals using the new air route will have to travel from Belgrade to Pristina and then back to Belgrade, for example. They will also not be able to fly to Belgrade from Pristina, if they first entered Kosovo via a border not recognised by Belgrade.

This article was updated at 3:10pm on January 20, to add more explanation from the head of the Serbian Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric.