Responding to the fact that representatives of Croatia once again “complained” about Serbia at a session of the EU Council Working Party on Enlargement (COELA), Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimović has stated today that this is nothing new from Serbia’s neighbour and that she is more interested in which position the Member States will take regarding the credible enlargement policy and whether they will support the opening of several chapters by the end of the year.
“If that really happened, and it seems that it did, that is nothing new from our neighbour; they should conduct an introspective analysis, because what occasionally happens in Croatia represents a serious challenge for EU values, but, that is their own concern”, Joksimović told Tanjug.
“I am more interested in which position the Member States will take regarding the credible enlargement policy and whether they will support the opening of several chapters by the end of the year, as Serbia has achieved many positive results in the reform process, and we have highly convincing results for the opening of several chapters”, she emphasised.
Representatives of Croatia once again “complained” about Serbia at a session of the EU Council Working Party on Enlargement (COELA), expressing a series of objections regarding cooperation in the field of war crimes, hate speech, as well as regarding freedom of expression in Serbia, reports today’s issue of Novosti.
According to the newspaper, at the session held on Tuesday, representatives of Bulgaria also presented their complaints regarding the recently held elections for national minorities' councils, while the Baltic countries, including Poland, also expressed their criticism, demanding Serbia's greater alignment with the EU common foreign and security policy and raising concerns about Russia's influence in this area.
The session was attended by the Head of the EU Delegation in Belgrade, Sem Fabrizi, who invited the Member States to open new chapters with Serbia.
He said that Serbia had achieved progress under chapters 23 and 24, in the areas of the judiciary and the rule of law, and that Serbia's joining declarations under the common foreign and security policy was directly related to the country’s national policy towards Kosovo and Metohija. Fabrizi also requested greater understanding from Member States on this issue.
At the aforementioned meeting, it was concluded that three chapters had advanced the most, namely chapters 9, 17 and 18, dealing with financial services, economic and monetary policy and statistics.
According to Novosti, the Intergovernmental Conference where the opening of these chapters might happen has been scheduled for 10 December.
Source: Tanjug
