(ANSA-AP) - BRUSSELS, JUNE 12 - European Union leaders appear
set to push back the start of membership talks with Albania and
North Macedonia despite warnings that further delays could
undermine pro-democratic reform efforts and stability in the
volatile Balkans region.
The prospect of EU membership has been a powerful driver of
reform in the Balkans since former Yugoslavia disintegrated into
war in the early 1990s, and the EU's executive arm, the European
Commission, recommended last month that the two be invited to
open negotiations.
At a summit in Brussels next week, EU leaders will discuss
the candidacies of Albania and North Macedonia, but the chairman
of their meeting - European Council President Donald Tusk -
signaled Wednesday that not all countries want them to start
negotiations right now.
"Over the last two years, your country has delivered all the
right political signals that the EU was expecting from the
candidates," Tusk said, standing alongside North Macedonia
President Stevo Pendarovski. "You have done everything that was
expected of you." "But I want to be honest with you: not all
member states are prepared to make the decision on opening
negotiations in the coming days," Tusk added.
The continued expansion of the 28-nation EU has complicated
decision-making, and a kind of enlargement fatigue set in after
10 countries joined in 2004. Upon taking up his post as European
Commission president in 2014, Jean-Claude Juncker said no
countries would join during his term, which ends on Oct. 31. EU
foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned last month that
Europe is "at a crossroads" when it comes to enlargement in the
Balkans. "We always say that it is a merit-based process, so
when merit is assessed as positive it needs to be acknowledged,"
she said. "Failure to recognize and respond to objective
progress would damage the European Union's credibility,"
Mogherini said, adding that it could also "undermine stability
and seriously discourage further reforms." Her warning came a
day after Serbia put its troops on full alert when armed Kosovo
police fired tear gas and arrested about two dozen people in
Serb-dominated northern Kosovo in what they called an operation
against organized crime. North Macedonia was granted membership
candidate status under the name Macedonia in 2005 but accession
talks never began, mostly because of the dispute with Greece
over its name. The two neighbors struck a deal last year and
North Macedonia was born, paving the way for the country to join
NATO and, eventually, the EU. (ANSA-AP).
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