Peter Sorensen, the European Union’s Special Envoy for Dialogue, has said that the EU has high expectations from the joint commission between Kosovo and Serbia aimed at clarifying the fate of people who went missing during the 1998–1999 war in Kosovo.
In a statement released on Friday, Sorensen confirmed that Kosovo and Serbia held the first tripartite meeting of the Joint Commission on Missing Persons on Thursday in Brussels.
“The European Union has high expectations that the Joint Commission will make an important contribution to clarifying the fate of missing persons and help close a painful chapter for families who have waited far too long for answers,” Sorensen said.
Nearly 1,600 people — the majority of them ethnic Albanians — remain missing from the 1998–1999 war.
Sorensen explained that the two sides reached an agreement on the establishment of the joint commission in December 2024. The commission stems from the Joint Declaration on Missing Persons, which Kosovo and Serbia agreed upon in Brussels in 2023 as part of the EU-facilitated dialogue for the normalization of relations.
According to Sorensen, the purpose of the joint commission is to oversee the implementation of the declaration, which aims to contribute to uncovering the fate of persons still missing, including forcibly disappeared persons, provide closure for their families, and promote reconciliation and sustainable peace.
On Thursday in Brussels, Sorensen held lengthy separate meetings with Kosovo’s chief negotiator, Besnik Bislimi, and Serbia’s chief negotiator, Petar Petković. Later in the evening, he chaired the first tripartite meeting of the joint commission.
Following the meetings, Bislimi said that the goal was to reach an agreement to operationalize the joint commission. “The meetings were successful, and in the end we managed to finally implement this objective,” he added.
Meanwhile, Petković said this was the first meeting of the joint commission for the implementation of the Declaration on Missing Persons. “This is extremely important and meaningful, and I hope that after this first meeting all processes toward finding all missing persons will be accelerated,” Petković said.