Group items tagged

Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle deliberately left early from a regional summit in Slovenia this weekend, signalling that the European Commission's patience with the Western Balkans has its limits.

On a visit to Albania, Füle used unusually tough language, warning Tirana that a prolonged political stalemate would harm the country's EU accession prospects

From Tirana, Füle went to Brdo pri Kranju, a resort in Slovenia, to attend – and make an early departure – from a regional conference on the European future of the Western Balkans. The conference was boycotted by Serbian President Boris Tadić due to the presence of Kosovo Prime Minister Hasim Thaçi. Belgrade had warned it would only attend international conferences where Kosovo is represented under its UNMIK heading, as the country was a UN protectorate before unilaterally declaring independence in February 2008 (EurActiv 08/03/10).

On his first tour of the Western Balkan, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy condemned the recent violence in Kosovo and called for restraint and dialogue. An extraordinary session of the UN Security Council will be held on the matter today (6 July).

Serbia unhappy with pace of EU integration Later in the day, Van Rompuy met with Serbian President Boris Tadić in Belgrade. According to an official communiqué, the two leaders discussed the situation in "Kosovo and Metohia," as Belgrade officially calls its former province. The press also reported that Tadić will attend an extraordinary session of the UN Security Council in New York today, called at the initiative of Serbia. According to the statement, Tadić voiced his dissatisfaction with the slowdown in the European integration process, and insisted that speeding up Serbia's EU accession was crucial for the future of the Western Balkans. Last month, Serbia took another step towards EU integration when EU foreign ministers agreed to start implementing an accord with Serbia known as the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA). The agreement had been blocked for several years, mainly as a result of the Netherlands' insistence that Belgrade must cooperate fully with the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Later today, Van Rompuy will be in Pristina to meet the president of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu. A visit to the headquarters of the EU's rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, is also on the agenda.

In a political blow for next month's planned Sarajevo conference, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele have indicated they will only attend if the presence of all Western Balkan countries, including Kosovo, is guaranteed. According to diplomatic sources in Brussels, Ms Ashton and Mr Fuele intend to follow the approach taken by EU council president Herman Van Rompuy, who stayed away from a EU-Western Balkans summit in Slovenia last month as Serbia refused to attend alongside Kosovo.

Romania is threatening to create problems for Croatia's EU accession bid in a diplomatic counter-attack against delays to its own entry into the EU's border-free Schengen zone. Romanian foreign minister Teodor Baconschi in an interview with the daily newspaper Adevarul on Monday (3 January) attacked Germany and France for linking Romania's Schengen bid to progress on corruption and organised crime.

EUobserver understands that this option is not really feasible however, as the monitoring was a jointly agreed commitment of Bulgaria and Romania when they joined the bloc. "It's unwise to give it up if you want something else at the same time," one EU official told this website. For its part, Croatia has already been held hostage by its neighbour Slovenia, which in recent years delayed its EU accession progress over a maritime border dispute. Romania's sabre-rattling seems to be directed primarily at Germany - Croatia's main supporter in the EU - rather than the Balkan state itself. But it could, in theory, delay the process. Croatia is hoping to finish EU accession talks in the coming months. EU governments and the European Parliament then have to approve and ratify its accession treaty, with membership likely to happen in 2013 if everything goes smoothly.

Mr Petkov's allegations reflect a dire image painted by EU officials in talks with US diplomats in Sofia, as reported in a US cable dating back to 26 June 2009 and published by WikiLeaks. Under the headline "How to you make them reform when they don't want to?" the US diplomats spoke of EU commission officials' "growing and by now extreme frustration with Sofia's cosmetic fixes to get a 'good report' while failing to undertake real reforms." "The government's defensive arrogance - and lack of political will - is intensifying enlargement fatigue in Brussels," an EU source told the US diplomat. "According to reliable contacts, Brussels Eurocrats have dubbed enlargement fatigue the 'Bulgarian Break,' further tarnishing Bulgaria's bad image within the EU," the cable added.

Croatia made "substantial progress" by opening six and closing five negotiating chapters with the EU, said Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn after a meeting between representatives of Croatia, Slovenia and the EU on Friday (2 October). But Zagreb recognised the difficulty of the challenges ahead in its accession talks, especially in justice and home affairs.

The conference, led on the EU side by Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Bildt, and on the Croatian side by Gordan Jandrokovi, minister of foreign affairs and European integration, opened negotiations on six chapters: Chapter 4 (Free Movement of Capital), Chapter 11 (Agriculture and Rural Development), Chapter 12 (Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Policy), Chapter 16 (Taxation), Chapter 22 (Regional Policy and Coordination of Structural Instruments), and Chapter 24 (Justice, Freedom and Security). It also provisionally closed five other chapters: Chapter 2 (Free Movement of Workers), Chapter 6 (Company Law), Chapter 18 (Statistics), Chapter 21 (Trans-European Networks) and Chapter 29 (Customs Union). Rehn insisted that the reopening of the negotiations, which now comprise a total of eleven chapters, represent a crucial step in Croatia's accession process.

Links European Union Council of the European Union: Eighth meeting of the Accession Conference at ministerial level with Croatia (2 October 2009)