Central European states urge EU to speed up enlargement in west Balkans

Seven Central European member states called on the European Union on Monday to accelerate the accession of Montenegro and Serbia to the bloc, saying a failure to integrate the western Balkans could pose a security threat to the whole region. Foreign ministers and deputy foreign ministers of the four Visegrad Group countries — Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic — as well as Austria, Slovenia and Croatia met in Budapest to discuss issues including migration and the situation in the western Balkans and Ukraine. „If we cannot speed up the European integration process (in the western Balkans) … we will have to face serious security challenges in the entire Central European region,“ Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told a news conference.

Szijjarto said the EU should accelerate its ongoing accession talks with Montenegro and Serbia and should open membership negotiations with the other countries in the western Balkans as well. Albania and Macedonia are EU candidate nations but have yet to start their accession talks, while Bosnia and Kosovo have yet to be granted candidacy status, though both hope to join the EU. The prospect of EU membership has for years been the main driver of reform in the Balkans after a decade of war and upheaval in the 1990s. But with Britain’s vote last year to leave the bloc, the rise of right-wing populism in many EU countries and debate over the future shape of the bloc, further enlargement has been placed firmly on the backburner.

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Source: Reuters