EU rewards Serbian progress on war crimes

By Tony Barber in Brussels

The European Union on Monday boosted Serbia’s EU membership prospects by unfreezing a trade agreement as reward for improved co-operation with war crimes investigators.

EU foreign ministers approved the decision after evaluating a report from Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

The step paves the way for a formal application for EU entry, which Serbia’s government is expected to submit later this month or in January.

Under EU rules the 27-nation bloc’s governments would then ask the European Commission to draw up an opinion on Serbia’s application. This would lead to the formal start of accession talks, a process that usually lasts several years.

Although Serbian entry is a long way off, the outlook for another round of EU enlargement has brightened over the past six months. Iceland applied for membership in July, and Croatia settled a border dispute with Slovenia in October that had blocked its accession talks for almost a year.

Reykjavik and Zagreb may be able to join the EU in 2012, but some hard work lies ahead for Croatia in areas such as fighting organised crime and corruption.

Meanwhile, the Commission is preparing opinions on the membership bids of Albania and Montenegro.

In a further sign of progress, EU governments agreed last week to allow visa-free travel in the bloc for citizens of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia from December 19.

The countries facing the biggest obstacles to joining the EU are Bosnia-Herzegovina, paralysed by internal nationalist rivalries, Macedonia, locked in a dispute with Greece over its name, and Turkey, which is an official candidate for membership but whose bid is opposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

The EU and Serbia signed their trade deal last year but the Netherlands blocked its implementation on the grounds that Belgrade was not co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal – in particular, by not arresting Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb general accused of committing atrocities in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

The Dutch government agreed to unfreeze the trade accord in recognition of Mr Brammertz’s assessment, delivered to the Security Council last week, that Serbia’s co-operation with his office had “continued to progress”.

Mr Brammertz stopped short of stating Serbia was “fully co-operating” with the tribunal. Belgrade’s path to EU membership therefore remains tied to the question of Mr Mladic and Goran Hadzic, another fugitive war crimes suspect.

“Pressure must be maintained in order for the two remaining fugitives to be found and extradited to The Hague,” Maxime Verhagen, Dutch foreign minister, said last week.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.