Kosovo lacks will to fight crime, corruption: EU report

(BRUSSELS) - Kosovo is plagued by corruption and organised crime and has little will to fight the phenomena, the European Commission said Wednesday in its first progress report since the region broke away from Serbia.

"Corruption is still widespread and remains a major problem in Kosovo," said the report, which also highlighted economic and human rights weaknesses, as well as a parallel government system run by ethnic Serbs.

"This is due to insufficient legislative and implementing measures and a lack of determination and the weakness of the judicial system," it said, warning that "an anti-corruption strategy and action plan remain to be adopted."

The report, the first by the EU's executive body since Kosovo declared independence in February, found that its ethnic Albanian leaders had no strategy nor plan to fight organised crime.

"The determination and capacity required to effectively tackle organised crime is lacking. The police tend to focus on maintaining order rather than on organised crime," it said.

The report said the justice system lacked the capacity to tackle crimes like human trafficking, while prosecutors and judges were working under such bad pay and conditions that they were no longer motivated.

On drug trafficking it said simply: "There has been no progress to report."

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, after a NATO launched an aerial bombing campaign against former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic's forces to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanian separatists.

Kosovo, almost half of whose population lives in poverty and where the unemployment rate is more than 40 percent, declared independence from Serbia on February 17, a move that most but not all EU nations have recognised.

Serbia and its UN veto-wielding ally Russia vehemently oppose independence.

• EU enlargement progress reports on Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo