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Leaders of Bosnia's divided communities are meeting to try to end years of political stalemate and reduce the danger of renewed conflict.European Union and United States representatives are mediating the talks in Sarajevo. The aim is to bring in constitutional reform and prepare Bosnia for eventual EU and NATO membership. But the Bosnian Serbs strongly oppose any moves that would jeopardise their desire for more autonomy.

The high representative in Bosnia is an international figure with considerable domestic power. The current incumbent, Valentin Inzko, has described the situation in the country as serious. "Bosnia is in a state of paralysis," he told the BBC. "Things are not moving at the moment. And I deeply regret all this nationalist rhetoric. It's not helpful, it's destructive and many, many wars have started with bad rhetoric. So we should really avoid it."

EmailSharePrint Back to Brussels Blog homepage The pace picks up on EU enlargement into the Balkans November 13, 2009 3:59pm Enlargement of the European Union is, almost imperceptibly, moving forward once more.  EU foreign ministers are expected next week to forward Albania’s membership application to the European Commission for an opinion.  This is a necessary technical step on the path to entry - small, but important. The Commission is already preparing opinions on the applications of Iceland and Montenegro.  The opinions will take quite some time to deliver - longer for Albania and Montenegro than for Iceland - but the machinery is now in motion. There are signs of progress elsewhere, too.  For a long time Serbia’s efforts to draw closer to the EU have been held back by the refusal of the Netherlands to permit implementation of Serbia’s EU stabilisation and association agreement.  The Dutch insist that Serge Brammertz, the chief United Nations war crimes prosecutor, must first of all declare that Serbia is fully complying with its efforts to capture war crimes suspects - principally, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander. Brammertz is due to hand his latest report to the UN Security Council in early December, and the Serbian government appears confident that it will be positive.  That would remove the Dutch veto and allow Serbia to make a formal application for EU membership.

EU countries have agreed to proceed with Albania's application for membership of the European Union, a first step in a long process towards possible membership of the bloc, EU diplomats said.

Background: Albania applied for EU membership in April 2009. In July, the EU Council stated that it would return to the country's application once the Albanian election procedure had been completed. Ever since the June national elections, the two main players, the governing Democratic Party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha and the Socialist party and main challenger Edi Rama have kept on accusing each other of fraud (EurActiv 30/06/09).  In its latest report on Albania, the European Commission stressed that Tirana needs to make progress, particularly on the rule of law and the fight against corruption, as well as the proper functioning of state institutions ( EurActiv 15/10/09). 

Ambassadors from the 27 EU states decided at a meeting in Brussels to ask the European Commission to prepare an assessment of Albania's readiness to start membership talks, the diplomats said.  The decision is expected to be formally approved by EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels on 16 and 17 November. 

The European Commission has proposed setting aside €3.5 billion of regional, agriculture and administrative aid for Croatia's first two years of EU membership, provided the country manages to join the bloc in 2012. The earmarked sum still needs the approval of the 27 member states.

The commission proposal starts with the 'working hypothesis' that the former Yogoslav country will join the EU in "January 2012", based on the "overall progress" achieved so far in accession negotiations. Similar proposals were adopted in the pre-accession phase of the other 12 countries which joined in 2004 and 2007. The document only refers to 2012 and 2013, the last two years of the current seven-year EU budget. From 2014 onwards, Croatia will be part of the next multi-annual financial framework. During these two years, the bulk of the money - €2.3 billion in so-called structural funds – would go to local and regional projects in infrastructure and small and medium enterprises. Croatian farmers would receive some €680 million, while programmes involving the country's judiciary and police would get €170 million.

The European Parliament held a heated debate yesterday (25 November) on future EU enlargement but also offered congratulations to Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who is expected to take a different portfolio in the Barroso II team.

The plenary debate in Strasbourg, which lasted three hours, nevertheless primarily focused on outstanding work rather than past achievements. Following the recent publication of the Commission's '2009 Strategy Paper' (EurActiv 15/10/09), the European Parliament prepared a resolution based on a draft by MEP Gabriele Albertini (Italy, EPP).  147 amendments  The five-page resolution has in the meantime been supplemented by a 101-page paper listing 147 amendments . Many of these concern the formulation of the name of Kosovo, which is still not recognised by six EU countries, the 'name dispute' between Macedonia and Greece, the Cyprus problem and the role of Turkey. 

Far from injecting new impetus into the European Union's foreign policy, the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on December 1, is likely to further sap its effectiveness.As a result of the treaty's coming into effect, the institutional underpinnings and basic assumptions of EU foreign policy now require adjustment in a manner that will diminish the importance of its communal (also described, variously, as the supranational, federalist, or integrationist) element.

Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins will be able to travel visa-free to Europe from 19 December, EU interior ministers decided on Monday. EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said the move was a "big step in terms of EU integration and Europeanisation of the civil societies in these countries" and added that the other Balkan countries could join the visa-free regime once they met the conditions.

Since the 1990s, the European Union (EU) has renewed its support for regional integration in other parts of the world, and incorporated this objective as a part of European external policy. Compared to the embryonic common foreign and security policy (CFSP), the support for regional integration and co-operation has been much less controversial, having been publicly endorsed by European Commission officials, and identified in the policy publications emanating from the various Directorate Generals (DGs). This article adopts a policy learning perspective to investigate this departure in external policy by the EU, and to identify the explanatory capacity of collective learning for the core beliefs, preferences, and policy instruments eventually adopted by European policy-makers. The article identifies what types of learning have taken place, and assesses the impact of learning on the policy outputs and outcomes.

Fule called on the Serbian authorities to increase their efforts in conducting the reforms necessary to get a positive opinion on Serbia's EU membership application.

He named eight priorities in the process: justice reform, fight against organized crime and corruption, changes to electoral legislation, making sure regulatory bodies function efficiently, property rights, human rights, regional cooperation and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

BRUSSELS, June 22 (Reuters) - After years of ambivalence about new members, European Union policymakers are hoping Croatia's accession to the 27-nation bloc will persuade other aspirants that democratic reforms reap dividends. The ambition is that Croatia's progress will show the western Balkans that the EU is still willing to grow and quell concerns that "enlargement fatigue" -- rife since the global economic crisis made Europeans wary about the cost of expansion -- means reform efforts are futile.

But Zagreb may now be days away from completing its entry talks and EU leaders are set to give a go-ahead to its accession at a summit on Thursday and Friday. EU officials say the leap was made possible by an intense reform push that proved the country of 4.4 million people was serious about fighting widespread corruption.

The Hungarian Presidency of the European Union is committed to giving a new impetus to the EU enlargement process and ihopes that a decision will be reached as early as this year on starting EU accession negotiations with Montenegro, Hungary's minister of state for foreign affairs Zsolt Németh said on June 21 2011.Németh was speaking at a news conference after the second meeting of the Stabilisation and Association Council(SAA) held between the EU and Montenegro in Luxembourg.