As of this Friday, Kosovo has canceled the entry of vehicles with Serbian license plates into its territory Partially cover them with a stickerafter Serbia allowed the free movement of vehicles with Kosovo license plates on its roads since the beginning of this year.
The decision is “an act of good neighborliness that comes after Serbia fully recognized Kosovo’s license plates,” the Kosovo government reported today.
Pristina and Belgrade agreed on this with the mediation of the European Union (EU) in 2011, but since the Serbian authorities did not recognize Kosovo license plates, Kosovo responded with a countermeasure in 2021.
The resulting tensions subsided an agreement on the use of stickers covering state symbols of the state in the event of entry into the other country.
Belgrade's decision to abandon this practice and allow free passage of cars with Kosovo license plates was praised by the EU.
Previously, in the last months of 2023, the majority of Serbs in the four municipalities in northern Kosovo where they form the majority agreed to replace the Serbian license plates that they had until then insisted on with Kosovo ones.
The Serbian government stressed that the recognition of Kosovo's license plates in no way represents a recognition of Kosovo's independence, which its former province unilaterally proclaimed in 2008.
The disagreement over license plates led to a climate of high tension in northern Kosovo in 2023, where several violent incidents were recorded, the worst of which was a terrorist attack by Serbian paramilitaries in which a Kosovar police officer and several attackers lost their lives.