Kosovo Fails to Integrate Serbian Civil Protection Members

It seemed so simple on paper. Under an EU-brokered agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, almost 500 former employees of the ethnic Serbian "Civil Protection Corps" were to be integrated into the relevant Kosovo state agencies.

Kosovo announced that the process of integration was complete on January 12.

In reality, implementation of the deal, one of several agreements signed in Brussels that seeks to bring Kosovo's restive Serb-majority north under Pristina's authority, has not run smoothly.

Little has gone according to plan, Veroljub Petronic, a former adviser on civil protection in the northern municipality of Zvecan, said.

Zvecan has been a municipality in the Kosovo system since 2013 but the old Serbian-run municipal structures, where Petronic works, still operate.

"Under the agreement from Brussels members of the Civil Protection Corps were supposed to resign from Serbian institutions and Pristina was supposed to open a call for employment for Serbs in the north of Kosovo in 19 ministries and agencies," Petronic recalled.

"But we haven't resigned and Prishtina has not open the call for work," he said.

"They couldn't publish a call for work because then it would be public," he explained.

The competition was intended only for former members of the Civil Protection force and was not there an "open" call.

Kosovo institutions have created 483 job places for people who worked in Serbian institutions in northern Kosovo.

Eighty firemen began work in July 2015, and in September another 25 went to work in the prison service.

But since then the process of reintegration has slowed.

"The main problem is that there was not enough transparency in presenting the open positions, but it went ministry by...