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KOSOVO WILL BE granted full rights of national sovereignty in September, and international supervision of the territory will come to an end.
A steering group has been responsible for overseeing independence in Kosovo and helping to establish domestic institutions. The ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence in 2008, and the UN recommended that this independence would be supervised by the international community.
On 2 July the International Steering Group for Kosovo announced that supervised independence in Kosovo would come to an end, and that it would become a fully sovereign state.
Since 2008 Kosovo has shared elements of its sovereignty with the international community, says Gëzim Visoka, a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Relations at DCU, and a former student of Pristina University.
He told TheJournal.ie that the presence of the international community to supervise the the initial years of independence has “helped Kosovo prove its commitment to peace and stability in the region and to gain further international recognition and support”.
So what does this mean for Kosovo?
Visoka said that this decision will have positive implications for completing Kosovo’s state-building process and will further consolidate a liberal democracy.
It will allow for the Kosovo Security Forces to become a complete army, and will allow Kosovo to exercise its external sovereignty more freely. Visoka said that this will lead to increased state recognition and give the state the ability to join more international institutions - Kosovo has already joined the IMF and the World Bank.
International law expert with DCU’s School of Law and Government Noelle Higgins told TheJournal.ie that while the decision to grant Kosovo full sovereignty is a significant one, it may be a little early, “citing continued clashes in the territory in relation to independence, which seem to have increased in recent months”.
Higgins said that when the steering group’s International Civilian Office in Kosovo closes in September, it will be interesting to note whether there is an escalation in clashes.
Kosovo and the UN
Ninety-one UN member states have officially recognised Kosovo, among them the United States and most of the EU member states. However, this granting of full sovereignty which will come in September is still insufficient for admission into the UN.
If Kosovo were to seek membership of the UN, Russia and China would be likely to exercise their powers of veto.
Visoka said that full sovereignty is an important step in expanding support for eventual admission into the UN…
…which will require a prior resolution of remaining fragile relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and the support of the Russian Federation and China as veto powers within the UN Security Council.
Higgins meanwhile said that China and Russia’s refusal to recognise Kosovo and their veto wielding powers will be a huge barrier to Kosovo’s UN membership:
You only have to look at Palestine’s thwarted membership attempt to see how the story will probably play out for Kosovo.
Kosovo and Serbia
Serbia — backed by Russia, China and others — has still failed to support Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, although recent meetings between the two sides have narrowed some differences.
The decision to end international supervision reflects confidence that Kosovo’s leadership can reduce tensions between majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs. However, international military and police will still patrol Kosovo to lower the risk of ethnic violence.
Kosovan Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has pledged to “communicate and cooperate with every single Serb leader in the north who respects the institutions of Kosovo”. The north of Kosovo contains a restive Serb enclave which has been at the forefront of denying the government’s authority.
In the most recent violence linked to ethnic tensions, an explosive device hidden at an apartment in the northern town of Mitrovica killed an ethnic Albanian man and wounded two of his children in April. Three unidentified assailants then beat up a 66-year-old Serb man in what officials said was apparent retaliation.
Kosovo and sport
Last week it emerged that a Kosovan athlete has been banned from entering the London Olympics as an independent under the Olympic flag by the International Olympic Committee, which does not recognise Kosovo.
Judo champion Majilinda Kelmendi will now compete for Albania.
Kosovo’s sports minister Memli Krasniqi said that the territory had been “suffering this isolation for 20 years and we have athletes who have been forced to leave in disiullusion to compete for other countries”, reports The Guardian.
Gëzim Visoka told TheJournal.ie that Kosovo is “gradually receiving admission into international sports federations”.
Membership of the UN is a pre-requisite of UEFA, but in May FIFA president Sepp Blatter made an executive decision that Kosovo’s national team should be allowed to play international matches.
The Serbian Football Association criticised the decision, and demanded that it should be reversed. Blatter then announced that the decision would be suspended until a meeting of the Executive Committee on 17 July.
Inside World Football reports that UEFA members were “hopping mad”, with UEFA president Michel Platini calling FIFA’s decision “purely political”.
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Meanwhile
An unknown shelf company buys a company in a tax haven somewhere to minimise paying tax in their own country.
Yes, and said company’s latest project is to launch an A to Z Guide on how to ship $10 bn annual profits tax free out of various western jurisdictions in a captainless boat to a Caribbean Island tax haven.
Along with the rest of the multinationals.
Only way for Apple is down, unless they start innovating, which is unlikely to happen since the end of the Steve Jobs era.
Maybe so
Plenty of shilling in the bank to whittle away in the meantime.
http://www.businessinsider.com/global-cash-reserves-companies-nations-2014-4?IR=T
Moderate Michael, Apple has been written off so many times and has always bounced back. It would be unwise to write them off based on stock market valuations. So it’s only the second most valuable company in the world ? And this means they’re on the way down? I would have thought that it was an indicator of success.
Michael, living in the cloud, no pun intended, if you think Apple is going down or even if it cares about Google.
Google makes basically no product, Apple is a product based company. If it only makes 99% of a gazillion instead of the full gazillion the 20 year old stockmarket jockeys write it off again.
In reality they force the price down, buy in at the new lower price then sell again a month later ehen the shares have recovered. Oldest trick in the business
Alphabet “… made a profit of $4.9 billion (€4.48 billion) in the last quarter of 2015, and saw its value rise to $568 billion (€520 billion) in after-hours trading, beating Apple’s value of $535 billion (€490 billion).”
Apple made a profit of $11.1 billion in the last quarter of 2015 and has more cash in the bank than the GDP of many European nations, over $200 billion. I wouldn’t worry too much about stock market valuations because they are so fickle. Anyone who writes Apple of is stupid. Largest or second largest company in the world? Is it really important?
Whoever clicks on those adds?
As someone who works in the industry (and it is an entire industry), I can’t tell you that a LOT of people click on those ads. In search, between 30-50 percent click on them depending on the search term (older, less tech savvy people are more likely).
Increasingly, more and more clicks are being driven from the display network as Google provides better ways to filter out the crap.
Those remarketing ads that “follow” you around, it would shock you how well they work. When they were first released, I refused to use them, believing everyone was like me, creeped out and would simply install an ad blocker. I was wrong. Very wrong.
Now, advertisers even have access to show you those remarketing ads based on your email address. This is still in beta but it works even better than regular remarketing lists. If I have your email address and it’s a Google email address, I can tell Google to show you my ads on the display network. Even if you’ve never had any interaction with me.
Google/Alphabet is going to become even more valuable this year. It’s advertising and analytics products are incredible. Whether you agree with advertising or not, they’re going from strength to strength. It would scare the crap out of you how much data about you that advertisers have. In Ireland, it’s pretty easy to build up a database of the entire population. Statistically, you’re likely to be in one of mine.
The rise in use of ad blockers (which on most of them, Google ads are whitelisted by default) is more than offset by the rise in new people using the Internet.
Google also have an entire team dedicated to making sure ads are not intrusive. I wouldn’t be shorting their stock any time soon.
Knock it if you will, just remember Googles stock is part of millions of people’s pension funds.
This is the best clickbait headline I have read this year.
i just had to click to click. Fair play.
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