Evaluating the EU Normative Power in the North of Kosovo: A Critical Appraisal

The paper evaluates the impact of the EU as a normative power actor in the north of Kosovo. The EU, as one of the most active international actors engaged in Kosovo, has set the stabilization of Kosovo as one of its priority foreign policy goals already in 1999. After the signature of the EU-brokered Brussels Dialogue (2013) between the governments in Serbia and Kosovo, the majority of the EU efforts focused on the north of Kosovo - the territory populated predominantly by the Serbs, who have been resisting to become recognized as a part of the state of Kosovo since 1999. Building on extensive field-work in the north of Kosovo (interviews & focus groups), the paper argues that the recent EU efforts , which have been mostly focused on big infrastructure projects and civil society programmes, actually act against the desire of the EU to be recognized as "a normative power actor", which, according to I. Manners, has "an ability to shape conceptions of normal" in international relations.