EU: No date for Skopje and Tirana; Sign of bloc’s links with W. Balkans

JOHN THYS / POOL / AFP

The entry of the new members to the European Union is of strategic importance, and geopolitical reality, an investment in peace, democracy and stability, the bloc's foreign ministers have said following their meeting in Luxembourg.

However, they failed to open the accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania.

Portuguese Minister Ana Paula Zacarias said that despite the ministers had not opened new clusters with Serbia and Montenegro, the bloc had sent „a favourable signal about the Union’s connection with the Western Balkans and especially about the new enlargement methodology.“

Later on Tuesday, the EU ministers, Serbia’s and Montenegro’s prime ministers Ana Brnabic and Zdravko Krivokapic, respectively, are due to address the media in Luxembourg to speak about what has been said in the „political inter-governmental conferences“ between Brussels, Belgrade and Podgorica.

„Serbia has done everything and I can guarantee that no country has done more than Serbia in the area of the rule of law in the last few months,“ Brnabic told reporters in Luxembourg ahead of the meeting. She added she hoped „for an open and honest conversation with EU members, representatives of the European Commission and High Representative Josep Borrell, to try to define what we need to do to see an even more positive signal from EU members to open, I hope, at least two clusters by at the end of this year.“

Also Ahead of the intergovernmental conference, Croatia’s Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic Radman said his country expected Serbia to strengthen good neighbourly relations with the Union’s member states and those that were not, including Belgrade’s recognition of the Srebrenica genocide.

„As Montenegro did, what we welcomed,“ he told reporters.

He listed other things the EU wanted from Serbia as „essential and sustainable progress in crucial areas, real political will for meeting all criteria and reforms, and an unequivocal commitment to the European integrations, particularly in the rule of law, fundamental rights, missing persons, the war victims’ rights and the prosecution of war crimes and war criminals.“

Zacarias said the EU ministers were informed that the European Parliament (EP) agreed on the IPA III bloc’s programme of support to the reforms in the Western Balkans worth 14.6 billion Euro from 2021-2027.