“My job is to attend the religious needs of the bullfighting family,” Cuéllar said. “Not only matadors, but also aficionados, those selling food at the arena and the bullfighters’ assistants.”
“It is time the two countries to overcome the past a focus on the common future,” she said. “I plan to invite the representatives from Belgrade and Pristina to Brussels as soon as possible to discuss the concrete steps forward.”In Kosovo, where Kallas will meet with Prime Minister Albin Kurti, political representatives and civil society groups, she said that the normalization of Kosovo-Serbia relations “is the only path to a safer and more prosperous future for the people of this region.”
“Stability depends on dialogue, not confrontation,” she said at a news conference.Kallas said that Brussels “has begun to gradually lift measures introduced in June 2023,” adding that a full lifting is “conditional on sustained de-escalation in the north.”Most of the ethnic Serb minority population lives in four municipalities in northern Kosovo, which has seen tensions rise in the last three years.
Normalization talks between Kosovo and Serbia began in 2011, but have failed to make any progress.The Kosovo war in 1998-1999 left around 11,400 people dead. A 78-day NATO air campaign ended the fighting and pushed Serbian forces out of Kosovo.
The six Western Balkan countries are in different phases of accession. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 encouraged
for the countries to join the bloc, fearing instability.The U.S. and China last week agreed to a
, giving financial markets a boost and at least temporarily relieving some of the anxiety over the impact of tariffs on the U.S. economy.Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve
for the third straight meeting after cutting it three times at the end of last year.Fed chair Jerome Powell said the potential for both higher unemployment and inflation are elevated, an unusual combination that complicates the central bank’s dual mandate of controlling prices and keeping unemployment low.