Analysts: “EU needs to take more concrete steps with enlargement”

19/09/2017 00:00

The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, declared
at the European Parliament that the block must continue the enlargement
perspective with Western Balkan.

The political analyst of Open Society European Policy Institute, Srdan Cvijic, considers this as very positive.

“Juncker’s speech marked on September 13th the first time that the European perspective of the region is clearly specified in one of the biggest speeches about the situation in the EU. However, the European Union must now pass to concrete actions”, Cvijic adds.

This is a positive development, but Cvijc says that without a clear enlargement perspective, the EU ability to influence changes in the region has been very limited, at least since 2009 and 2010. “After Juncker’s speech, we expect the European Union to go from words to actions, and pay to the rule of law progress the same importance paid to the efforts for closing the road of immigrants in Western Balkan during 2015-2016”, the OSEPI analyst says.

The President of the European Commission declared last week that Europe must folow a credible enlargement project in Western Balkan, but he said that no country of the region will be able to join the block within the current mandate of this commission, which ends in 2019.

“No candidate is ready. But later, EU will have more than 27 states”, he declared.

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