The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo: Remarks on its Legality and its Relations with UNMIK

Kosovo has been a very difficult and slippery issue for the international community since the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led military operation against the then Yugoslav armed forces in June 1999 1. The configuration of the architecture of the international presence in Kosovo, stemming from UN Security Council Resolution 1244/1999, has proved to be quite effective in the field. Both the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) have been able to carry out their respective mandates in a not excessively controversial manner. However, it has left untouched the decisive issue of the future status of Kosovo. In recent years the Balkan region has become a key priority for the European Union (EU) as the future of the Western Balkan countries lies firmly in their European outlook. The EU’s efforts in Kosovo build on the significant support it has been providing over the past years. At nearly 2 billion euros to date, the EU is already the largest donor to Kosovo. In the coming years (2007-2010), it will allow allocate more resources to Kosovo per capita than to any other place in the world, nearly 330 million euros. In recent months, after a long and fruitless round of negotiations about the future of Kosovo, the EU decided to increase its role in this area through decisions to deploy the EULEX Kosovo mission and to appoint an EU Special Representative. Both these decisions have raised serious criticism from various major international players with specific interests in that area. In recent times, concerns about the legality of the EULEX Mission and its relations with UNMIK also have been raised within the EU. The main goal of this paper is to examine the legal basis of the European Union’s decision to launch the EULEX Kosovo Mission from an international law perspective. If, from the point of view of the EU Treaty, the legal foundations of the Joint Action seem solidly based on articles 14 and 25 of the Treaty on European Union, from an international law perspective, the question of the legality of EULEX’s deployment seems much more complex and disputable. The issues at stake are quite complex as they involve, among others: the clarification of the Mission’s nature; Kosovo’s legal status at the moment when the EU Joint action was adopted, and after Kosovo’s Declaration of independence, the question of Kosovo’s recognition by various EU member states, and its relationships with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1244/1999 and with the UN Mission in Kosovo and NATO led KFOR.