Kurti: We had the right to tell the Serb members not to go, we have no right to tell them to go back

Acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti has said that the removal of Serbian judges and prosecutors from institutions was a political and individual act on their part and that their return is now a matter of law, which does not allow such a thing. 

Kurti stressed that in 2022, when they resigned, the Serbian actors were told not to take that action and currently, he stated, they have no legal or constitutional right to be told to return. 

"The organized and politically motivated abandonment of the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo by members of the Serbian community at the end of 2022 was the starting point of a series of sabotaging actions against the state. Since then, we have said and called on all Serbs in the institutions: 'do not abandon them', 'do not resign', but we have not said and do not have the right to tell them 'go back'. We had the political right to tell them not to go, but we do not have the constitutional and legal right to tell you to go back", he said.

Kurti called the removal of Serbian judges and prosecutors an act of sabotage of legality and constitutionality.  

"Their departure was a political, individual act, although organized, the return is a legal and constitutional matter. There can be no return that overrides the Constitution and the law, especially when the abandonment was an act of sabotage of legality and constitutionality. Always according to the constitutionality and legality, these resignations were handled days ago by the Kosovo Police, and days ago by the Prosecutorial Council, while today, while we were waiting for the Kosovo Judicial Council to act the same, we realized that the meeting failed due to lack of quorum, we expect that this issue will also have such an epilogue in the next meeting", Kurti concluded.