Serbia and Kosovo’s joint commission on missing persons convened in Brussels for the first time, over two years after it was announced, the EU said Friday.
Of the 6,065 people who went missing during the 1998-99 war, around 1,600 cases remain unresolved, according to the EU's diplomatic service.
Although the Declaration on Missing Persons was agreed in May 2023 by Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, little progress has been made so far.
A focus of the commission will be to ensure cooperation in locating burial sites and sharing information to identify missing people.
The EU said in a statement that it had "great expectations" that the commission could help "close a painful chapter" for the families of the missing.
Chief negotiator for Serbia Petar Petkovic and his Kosovo counterpart Besnik Bislimi, along with EU Special Representative Peter Sorensen, held the first meeting late Thursday in Brussels.
Bislimi described the talks as "successful" while Petkovic said the issue was not "political, but humanitarian."
"We will do everything necessary to help establish the full truth as soon as possible and to clarify the fate of all missing persons," Petkovic said.
Relationships between the two countries have remained tense since the 1990s, with Belgrade never recognizing the smaller nation's independence, which it declared in 2008.
For more than a decade, the EU-facilitated dialogue on normalizing relations has been held in Brussels, but it stalled in recent years.
Vucic and Kurti have not met since 2024, but resolving bilateral relations remains crucial for both countries' EU ambitions.
The meeting comes after Sorensen visited Belgrade and Pristina earlier this month to stress the need for tangible results this year.
