Serbian dinar displaced: queue in front of a bank in Leposavic.
Image: AFP
Belgrade claims that the Serb minority is emigrating en masse from Kosovo for political reasons. Serbian statistics show: This is propaganda.
“Exodus”, apart from the word “genocide”, is a favorite term of Serbian nationalists to describe the supposedly existentially threatening situation of the Serbs in Kosovo. Not a month has gone by for years, and in some months not a week, without Serbian politicians or media repeating the claim that the miserable situation of Serbs in Kosovo is leading to a mass exodus from the once Serbian-controlled province, which declared state independence in 2008.
These days, the announcement by Kosovo's head of government, Albin Kurti, that in future only the euro should be accepted as a means of payment in Kosovo, is serving as ammunition for Belgrade's claims of this kind. Petar Petković, head of the Kosovo office of the Serbian government, describes Kurti's move as to push the Serbian dinar out of Kosovo as a parallel currency as part of its attempt to cause “an exodus of the Serbian people”.