Serbian minister Snežana Paunović has been given a lifetime ban on entering Kosovo. The decision was announced by Kosovo's interior minister Xhelal Sveçla, after Paunović uttered a sentence in a Belgrade studio that the Balkans do not erase easily.

"Had I been in Milošević's place in 1998, I would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo," the minister said in a television interview. Not some anonymous commenter, but a member of the Serbian government - a person who currently holds office and signs documents in the name of the state.

Sveçla did not let it slide. According to him, Paunović's rhetoric shows "the continuity of a state policy that for decades produced violence, crimes and attempts to erase Albanians from their homes." A message that ties one minister's statement directly to the 1990s, rather than treating it as a random slip.

Brussels reacted too. European Commission spokesperson Anita Hipper was brief and sharp: "There is no place in Europe for rhetoric that justifies and advocates ethnic cleansing." A sentence that sounds firm - but how much does it weigh when it comes from an institution that has spent years learning to live with statements like this from the region?

After a wave of reactions, Paunović put out a statement claiming it was only a matter of "analysis." A classic Balkan move: first you throw out the sentence, then you explain that we understood it wrong - but without a single word that it has been withdrawn. It stays in force, just wrapped in softer phrasing.

And that's where the real problem lies. The entry ban is symbolic - Paunović probably had no intention of travelling to Pristina anyway. What remains is that an ethnic cleansing was mentioned publicly, with no consequences for the office holder, as a legitimate political argument. When the highest officials normalise words like these, the line of the acceptable shifts - and the Balkans remember well where that leads.