Balkans to figure high on Austrian agenda

Date: 08/12/05

Relations with the Western Balkans are to be high on the agenda of the Austrian EU presidency, starting on 1 January 2006. The Austrian government is planning to organise a series of meetings to discuss the Western Balkans. They are expected to culminate in talks at an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Salzburg on 10-11 March which is to focus on the Balkans.

Austria has long been a strong backer of early EU membership for the countries of the Western Balkans, lobbying successfully for the EU to open accession negotiations with Croatia, on 4 October, despite Zagreb's failure to hand over war crimes indictee Ante Gotovina.

After a survey of the current situation in the country, accession talks with Croatia are expected to begin in earnest under the Austrian presidency.

Talks on so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreements with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro will also talk place under the Austrian presidency.

But Austria's keenness to integrate the Balkans into the EU is likely to be criticised by countries whose citizens are sceptical of further EU enlargement. The debates preceding the referenda on the EU constitution in France and the Netherlands

this spring have shown mounting opposition to further waves of enlargement, after the accession of ten states in May 2004 and the planned accession of Bulgaria and Romania on 1 January 2007.

Speaking to the BBC recently, Richard Holbrooke, former US assistant secretary of state, who negotiated the Dayton Accords which put an end to the Balkans wars ten years ago, warned that the EU might be putting too low a price on membership for that region's countries.

Preview of the Austrian Presidency of the EU in the first half of 2006 and its expected focus on the EU's relations with the Western Balkans.

European Commission: DG Enlargement: Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/index_en.htm

---