EU membership becoming moving target - FM

EU membership becoming moving target - FM

It was agreed that foreign minister would hold regular meetings every six months, at which all outstanding issues will be discussed, he said.

According to Dacic, it was agreed to seek common interests and closer economic ties throughout this region, in cooperation with other countries and organizations such as the EU.

Dacic said that Serbia in this respect is interested in the fate of the Berlin process and what will be after the summit in Italy, because it is important for our country to have the support of the big countries of the European Union to a faster integration of the Western Balkans into the Union.

The United Kingdom applied to be the next host, he said and pointed out that Serbia is interested in a long-term process which would allow for the open road in European integration, not only for Serbia, but also for the entire region.

Faced with a variety of challenges at the global, bilateral and regional level, it is important that the meetings are held to discuss and to resolve all outstanding issues through dialogue, which is why the meeting in Skopje was a success, he concluded, according to the Serbian government.

There are many unknowns in the European integration process, as the criteria for the EU were becoming more and more stringent and membership was becoming a moving target, Dacic said in Skopje, Beta reported.

He told the Western Balkans Six meeting that regional cooperation in the Balkans was mostly incited by the European integration process and that the big question was what kind of repercussions the lack of clear European prospects would have, while because of the EU's crisis, expansion was being mentioned less and less frequently.

"Serbia is open to the process of reconciliation, which requires mutual respect and agreement, and not one-sided moves. We are devoted to membership in the EU, but the reality is that it is a question of political decision-making and consent on the part of all members of the EU when we will become a part of the EU. Obviously the criteria are becoming stricter, membership is becoming a moving target, and it is unknown at what rate the process will unfold during the period of EU reforms which is in progress," Dacic said.

He said that Serbia "remains deeply committed to stability in the region and its accession process," and that he genuinely hoped that all of these efforts would be acknowledged adequately by the EU.

"The first confirmation of that will be the EU's readiness to enable the opening of a larger number of negotiating chapters this year than we managed to open over the past three years, when we began the negotiations six," Dacic said.

Dacic said that the format of the Western Balkans Six, which gathers Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia within the Berlin Process, had proved to "be a very good informal forum for strengthening regional cooperation in the Western Balkans."