Legal obstacles facing Kosovo towards its integration to the EU. An analysis of the legal obstacles facing Kosovo on the road to accession to the EU

      Аннотация: For the whole territory of Kosovo, after the 1999 Kosovo war and after the 2008 Kosovo Declaration of Independence, the question has not been whether to integrate into the European Union or not but to a certain extent a question of how and when this integration should be achieved. The EU integration process is a highly difficult process which involves a series of formal steps. For the accession process of the Western Balkan, a specific process has been elaborated, the so-called Stabilization and Association Process. Kosovo, although firmly anchored in the framework of the SAP, was not part of it, but of another association, the Stabilization Tracking Mechanism which was the main instrument for political and technical dialogue between the Government of Kosovo and the European Commission. However, EU recently concluded that there is no legal obstacle for Kosovo to sign the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, whereas the negotiations began on the fall of 2013. The author divides this analytic paper into five chapters, which include an introduction to the history and statehood of Kosovo,ICJ Advisory Opinion over Kosovo,the legal framework of the EU’s enlargement policy for Kosovo

Ключевые слова: European Union, Kosovo, statehood, Copenhagen Criteria, History Background of Kosovo, ICJ Kosovo Advisory Opinion, Stabilisation Tracking Mechanism, Stabilisation Association Agreement