Germany backs Serbia’s EU bid

Ministers meet on ties

BELGRADE, April 13, (Agencies): Germany supports Serbia on its path to the European Union membership but the Balkan country must work on reforms and sort out ties with its former province Kosovo, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Wednesday .

Speaking before a meeting with Serbian presidentelect Aleksandar Vucic, Gabriel said: “You have a responsibility to continue reforms and to continue to develop better relations with Kosovo. That is an essential precondition for accession to the European Union.”

Gabriel said he could not give a precise date when Serbia could enter EU.

Six countries in the Western Balkan region, which is still recovering from a decade of wars and economic turmoil in the 1990s, aim to join the European Union — Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania.

Gabriel said Serbia, the biggest market, has “a good bit of work” to do to meet the requirements for EU membership, including improving transparency, governance and rule of law, and fighting corruption.

Those steps were also important for Serbia to be able to attract small-and medium-sized businesses, who needed stable conditions, he said.

He said it was good that daily protests by thousands of people after Vucic’s election on April 2 had been allowed to proceed without government intervention.

“If you want to get into the EU, you must know that demonstrations and protests against democratically elected governments and president are possible, permitted and within the EU, quite common,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel

Germany’s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel urged the European Union on Thursday to support infrastructure projects in the Western Balkans and told Kosovo it needed to improve relations with Serbia to advance its bid to join the EU.

Gabriel, who spoke after meeting Kosovan Prime Minister Isa Mustafa, also urged the parliament in Pristina to finalise a border deal with Montenegro to unlock a visa liberalization agreement, saying the two countries were not really that far apart.

The opposition party opposes the border deal, however, and it is unclear if it would win the necessary two-thirds support.

Gabriel, a former economics minister, told a joint news conference that the EU could do “significantly more” to support Kosovo and other Western Balkan countries as they worked to fulfil the EU’s strict criteria for membership.

Nearly two decades after the Kosovo war, relations between Serbia and the ethnic Albanian-majority government in Kosovo remain strained. Serbia continues to regard Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, as a renegade province.

“It will cost money, yes, but it would be relatively inexpensive compared to the alternative, which is a rekindling of the old tensions in the region,” Gabriel said.

“It would be smart of Europe to insist that all the criteria of EU membership be met, but also to do more ... to improve the living conditions of the people here so they don’t lose their faith in Europe,” he said.

At the same time, he said it was imperative for Kosovo, Serbia and other countries to work to improve relations among themselves and build the trust needed for future EU membership.

“In the end they will only get into the EU if they trust each other,” he said.

Gabriel gave a similar message to Serbia on Wednesday, telling it that Germany supported it on its path to EU membership but that it must work on reforms and mend fences with Kosovo.

The European Union called on Albania’s opposition Wednesday to end its parliament boycott and take part in launching justice reforms, considered key to the country’s integration efforts with the 28-nation bloc.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn issued a joint statement telling Albania that starting the justice reforms was “a crucial step for the country to join the European Union.”

They said the political debate should take place “inside the parliament, according to democratic practices.”

The justice reforms approved last year has been hampered by the opposition boycott of parliament, which needs to create the vetting bodies that will evaluate the backgrounds of judges and prosecutors. The opposition says those bodies could be subject to manipulation.

Opposition Democratic Party leader Lulzim Basha on Wednesday accused “senior diplomats in Tirana,” without naming them, of supporting efforts by Prime Minister Edi Rama to put the justice system under the ruling party’s control.

Since mid-February, Democrats supporters have blocked the main boulevard in Tirana, the capital, with a tent in front of Rama’s office, saying they will boycott the June 18 parliamentary election because they claim the government will manipulate the vote with drug money.

Foreign ministers from Central and Eastern Europe met Wednesday in Warsaw to discuss the future of the European Union’s ties with its eastern neighbors and prospects for the bloc’s enlargement.

The meeting brought together ministers from the EU’s so-called Visegrad Group — Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic and Slovakia — and six other nations aspiring to join the club: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The EU commissioner for neighborhood policy and enlargement, Johannes Hahn, said that a good network of road and rail connections between the EU and its neighbors, as well as closer ties in the energy sector, would help stabilize and develop Eastern Europe.

Poland, which currently leads the Visegrad Group, is a strong advocate of expanding the EU’s membership as a step toward greater European stability.

The EU has put its expansion on the backburner since the financial crisis and recent problems like the impending departure of Britain.

The bloc plans to hold a summit on the ties it is developing with its eastern partners in November.