EU denkt dit jaar onderhandelingen over EU toetreding met Macedonië te starten (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU on Wednesday (9 April) said it hopes EU accession talks with Macedonia can be opened by the end of this year - provided that the country speeds up its reform process.
"We hope that [EU accession] negotiations are going to be open this year" with Skopje, said Janez Lenarcic, state secretary for European affairs for Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, in the European Parliament's plenary session in Brussels.
"We hope to initiate the accession process as soon as possible," he added.
However, in order for this to happen, the Balkan country - which has been granted the status of EU candidate since 2005 - has to make more efforts in several fields.
For instance, administrative reforms should be pushed further, and the rights of the minorities living in Macedonia should be improved.
According to Dutch MEP Erik Meijer, who drafted a report for the European Parliament on Macedonia's progress towards the EU, Skopje should grant ethnic Albanians full language rights and recognise regional languages.
But if the country "acts with determination and sustained efforts," then it is "well placed to take an historic step forward this year," EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said.
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The EU encouragement comes as Macedonia seems headed for early elections, after the two largest parties in the coalition government - the Christian Democrat VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Party of Albanians - backed a motion tabled by the opposition to dissolve the parliament.
"Considering developments in the dispute Greece has with us, our Euro-Atlantic integration, the inefficiency of parliament and events in Bucharest, right now, there is no better solution than for the nation to hold early elections," foreign minister Antonio Milososki of the VMRO-DPMNE party was quoted as saying by Reuters.
An extraordinary parliamentary session scheduled for Thursday (10 April) is to be decisive in that respect, and if agreed upon, the early elections are to be held no later than 10 June, according to Macedonian news agency Makfax.
At a NATO summit in Bucharest last week, Greece blocked an invitation to Macedonia to join the alliance due to an ongoing dispute over the country's name. Athens refuses to recognise its neighbour's constitutional name - Republic of Macedonia, considering that it implies territorial claims on a northern Greek province also called Macedonia.
The "name dispute" has been going on for 17 years.
But on Wednesday, the EU warned Macedonia against focusing on issues such as this one, which could delay the country's reforms and Euro-Atlantic integration.
"The name issue has consumed much political energy, lately," commissioner Rehn said, adding that despite last week's "disappointment", all Macedonian political forces should now "concentrate their energies on the reform agenda".
For his part, Mr Lenarcic also warned that "the political crisis, early elections, perhaps these are things that will slow down the reform process."
Meanwhile, Brussels also reiterated its positive message to Croatia, namely that if it keeps the pace of reforms, it may close accession negotiations in 2009.
Among other things, the EU estimates that Zagreb still needs to make more "in judicial, administrative and economic reforms, in the fight against corruption and on refugee return and minority rights."
Nevertheless, at a meeting on Wednesday EU ambassadors assessed that all the conditions were met for Croatia to open the Justice, Freedom and Security chapter of its EU negotiations package, according to Croatian daily Javno.
The country started EU accession talks in 2005 and has so far opened 16 and provisionally closed two out of the 35 chapters where negotiations need to be finalised before it becomes a full EU member - something that is expected to happen by 2011.