During her first official visit to Kosovo, EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Federica Mogherini announced that Kosovo and Serbia, under the brokerage of the EU, reached an agreement to finally dismantle the Civilna Zastita, or Civil Protection Corps (CPC), that have been functioning in Kosovo’s four northern municipalities for years.

In the former Yugoslavia, Civil Protection Corps were a component of the military. After the war in Kosovo, they became regulated by Serbia’s Law on Emergency Situations, tasked with being the first responders to emergency situations like floods and earthquakes. The units themselves operate under municipal governments.

Prishtina has long viewed them as an armed, illegal paramilitary body, while in northern Kosovo, members of the CPC maintain their role is humanitarian.

There are 751 CPC members now. The new agreement, available on the Kosovo government website, foresees that 483 new job positions will be created for former CPC members, all in northern Kosovo. All applicants will need to get Kosovo identity documents if they don’t already have them, and go through a security check with EULEX. It is unclear where all of these people will be placed. The Kosovo government will place 80 in the Agency for Emergency Management and 25 in the correctional service. Still others will receive salaries while waiting up to three years for a permanent job placement.

The agreement envisions that integration will be completed by September 1, 2015. The accord also stipulates that the three observation points on the road between Mitrovica and Jarinje will be removed by April 20, 2015, and that the observation point on the Iber River bridge which separates north and south Mitrovica will be under the control of Kosovo Police by the same date.

This story was written as part of BIG DEAL, a civic oversight project examining the implementation of agreements between Kosovo and Serbia. The project is being implemented by BIRN Kosovo, Internews Kosova and Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability – CRTA, with support from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.