Croatia edges closer to EU entry

Croatia edges closer to EU entry
By Tony Barber in Brussels
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: October 14 2009 14:27 | Last updated: October 14 2009 14:27
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/20cdc870-b8c2-11de-809b-00144feab49a.html


The European Commission told Croatia on Wednesday to crack down harder on corruption and improve co-operation with United Nations war crimes investigators in order to speed up its entry into the European Union.

In its annual reports on countries that aspire to join the EU, the Commission also recommended for the first time that the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia should start its accession talks, held up for four years by a dispute with Greece.

The prospects for expanding the 27-nation EU have recently brightened, with Slovenia lifting a veto on Croatia’s membership talks, Iceland submitting an application to join, and the EU’s Lisbon treaty on institutional reform creeping closer to implementation.

Except for Croatia and Iceland, however, no country is expected to meet the necessary standards for joining the EU in the next two to three years.

Enlargement looked in danger last year of being sidetracked as financial crisis and recession damped enthusiasm in EU countries for admitting more members. Germany and France even demanded that the EU should put enlargement on ice as long as the Lisbon treaty remained unratified.

Nevertheless the Commission believes in the “transformative power” of its enlargement policy, especially in the Balkans, where the lure of EU membership is seen as a lever to overcome the region’s persistent political and economic instability.

The Commission’s reports painted a mixed picture of the aspirant countries, ranging from a positive assessment of Montenegro to a bleak account of political tensions and a dysfunctional state in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“In the western Balkans, progress achieved is not irreversible. Political minefields remain, either in the form of bilateral disputes or domestic stalemates,” Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, told reporters.

He said Croatia was “nearing the finishing line” of its membership talks, but cautioned that the authorities needed to strengthen the independence of the judiciary and intensify efforts against organised crime and corruption.

Of the 35 policy chapters that a country must conclude before it can join the EU, Croatia has opened 28, of which 13 have been provisionally closed, the Commission said. It added Croatia stood a chance of completing its accession talks next year, but only if it met “all outstanding benchmarks”.

Mr Rehn drew attention to Croatia’s failure to grant UN war crimes investigators proper access to documents relating to the 1991-95 wars in former Yugoslavia, in which Croatia defeated an insurrection by its Serbian minority and fought Serbs and at times Muslims in Bosnia.

Mr Rehn said Macedonia deserved to start accession talks, because it had made “convincing progress” in areas such as improving election standards and strengthening the rights of ethnic minorities.

However, EU diplomats said there was no immediate evidence that Greece’s new socialist government would permit the talks to begin. Like their conservative predecessors, the socialists denounce the ex-Yugoslav state’s insistence on calling itself Macedonia, regarding it as a threat to Greece’s heritage and territorial integrity.

The Commission said it was urgent that Turkey, which like Croatia and Macedonia has been an official candidate for membership since 2005, should clear the cloud over its talks by heeding EU advice to open its ports to Greek Cypriot vessels from Cyprus.

However, the Commission’s language was relatively restrained, suggesting that it wanted to avoid alienating Turkey as talks on a comprehensive Cyprus settlement enter a delicate phase.

The Commission praised Turkey for making progress in judicial reform and opening a 24-hour Kurdish-language TV channel, but said: “Significant efforts are still required in most areas [such as] freedom of expression and of the press … freedom of religion, and the fight against torture and ill-treatment.”