EU schaft visa voor westelijke Balkanlanden af, maar maant regio om door te pakken (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Spain's top diplomat on Wednesday (2 June) in Sarajevo promised EU visa-free travel and future accession to "all the people of the Western Balkans," despite deep-rooted political problems in the post-war region.
"We have welcomed the European Union's intention to extend visa liberalisation to all the people of the Western Balkans," the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said at a high-level EU-Balkans conference in the Bosnian capital.
"Today in Sarajevo I think the European Union and the Western Balkans decided to have a new deal, a deal of the future, a future of opportunity, a future of peace, a future of full integration into the EU."
Referring to the EU commission's decision in May to recommend that the EU parliament and member states move ahead with free travel for Albania and Bosnia, he added: "I cannot give you a date when you can come to Madrid without queuing at the Spanish consulate but it's going to be very soon, and I think it's going to be this year."
The Sarajevo event was designed to create a feel-good factor on the 10th anniversary of the Zagreb summit (which first dangled the prospect of Balkans enlargement), amid fears that the eurozone's financial crisis will slow EU expansion.
Mr Moratinos said "some difficulties here and there" remain in terms of the EU's efforts to bring the region up to its standard of development. But he urged pessimists to look at the dire situation 10 years' back, following the series of bloody Balkans wars.
The prediction on quickly relaxing Albania and Bosnia's travel requirements comes despite clashes between political parties in Tirana and mounting ethnic tensions in Sarajevo, which threaten to block the reforms still needed to meet the EU's visa-free conditions. In the case of Bosnia, the Serb-Muslim rift risks breaking the federation apart.
Mr Moratinos also skirted around the problem of Kosovo.
Spain is among the five EU countries which do not recognise Kosovo's declaration of independence. The deadlock means it cannot complete an EU visa-free travel deal or join the bloc as a full member, raising the risk of creating a majority Muslim ghetto surrounded by EU-bound neighbours.
A Spanish diplomat told EUobserver the Kosovo question "will be looked" and that "there are ideas on the table." An EU official said the Spanish formula "all the people of the Western Balkans" leaves open the option of Kosovo getting visa-free perks or EU membership as a part of Serbia.
The Sarajevo conference did not live up to the Spanish EU presidency's original vision.
Some top delegates, such as French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, Germany's Guido Westerwelle and the US' Hilary Clinton sent replacements citing agenda problems. Ms Ashton skipped the final press conference because her "calendar is extremely, extremely busy." And Spain's final communique dropped earlier ideas on a clear accession "roadmap" in favour of a general political promise on enlargement.
But the event represents a success for Madrid, whose EU chairmanship had so far been marked by a cancelled US summit, a "postponed" Euro-Mediterranean summit and the near failure of a top-level Latin American meeting.
The Sarajevo meeting also threatened to fall apart when Serbia objected to attending with equal status to Kosovo's disputed "foreign minister." In the end, an arcane protocol formula saved the day, with delegates' badges stating their name only and not their country and with Kosovo's representative first introduced by a UN official before he spoke.
"Kosovo made it's intervention and nobody walked out," a Spanish diplomatic source said.