This summer we announced that we will welcome Croatia as the 28th EU Member State in 2013 if the remaining reforms are implemented according to the timetable. The news on EU enlargement from today’s meeting with the College of Commissioners is that we recommend candidate status for Serbia which means that, with the provision that the relationship with Kosovo is improved, we could start membership negotiations. We also recommend that accession negotiations are opened with Montenegro. Towards the end of the year I also hope to be able to launch a visa dialogue with Kosovo, with the long term goal of achieving full visa liberalisation. The report points out the enormous progress made by the countries in this region, which was torn apart by war not so long ago. At the same time there remains a lot to be done in all of these countries to strengthen the rule of law, to fight organised crime and corruption and to strengthen the minorities’ rights.
With Turkey it is unfortunately not going as well as I would wish for but we continue to cooperate within my area of responsibility, on things like visa issues and migration and I hope that in the near future we will be able to move forward with accession negations as well.
Today we also adopted a new policy on agriculture. Together with colleagues and allied Commissioners I have fought hard for important improvements. I had hoped for a greater reform and market adjustments but taking into account how difficult our previous discussions on this topic has been, I am very happy about the changes we managed to get through today. For example we are earmarking money for environment and climate measures and there will be greater flexibility to move money to environmental and more long term projects. We will also be removing the quota system on sugar by 2015 which currently only makes it more expensive for consumers. These are significant improvements, although they are not, in my opinion, enough.
Email This Post
RSS comments feed on this entry