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The EU May Want a Joint Bid by Serbia and Montenegro

22 11 2007  Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister Gordana Djurovic said the Adriatic republic would submit its candidacy for EU membership in the first half of 2008. However, Goran Svilanovic, a representative of the Stability Pact for South-eastern Europe, believes Montenegro might want to defer its plans in order to submit a joint bid with neighbouring Serbia.

“Montenegro, Serbia and Albania are expected to submit their candidacies next year”, Svilanovic said. “The feeling in Brussels is that Montenegro is ready to move forward while waiting for Serbia to complete its own finishing touches.

“Albania will also be allowed to jump on the bandwagon, although it’s not ready yet, but all this is unofficial and a definitive decision is unlikely to be made before 2009, when the Czech Republic takes over the EU’s Presidency. Our common goal is to meet the standards in order to submit a joint bid for EU membership in 2009,” Svilanovic said.

A panel board debate called “Montenegro on the EU path – progress and challenges,” organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Civic Education Centre (CGO), focused on the issue of EU candidacy, but European Commission representative Eric Trotemann declined to predict how quickly Montenegro could join the EU.

“The EC does not comment on dates related to candidacy. The implementation of the Agreement on Stabilization and Association (SSP) and reforms in Montenegro should substantially improve Montenegro’s relations with the EU,” said Trotemann, a member of the first EC delegation in Montenegro that started working in the coastal republic two weeks ago.

Djurovic pointed out Montenegro had no reason to be unhappy with this year’s achievements in its effort to join the EU, adding that agreements with the European body on free trade, a less stringent visa regime and repatriating illegal Montenegrin migrants should start in January.

She said the national integration programme, still in its early stages, should provide a clear picture of Montenegro’s international commitments over the next five years.

“European integration and a dynamic transformation of our society are the choice we have made. I hope we live up to the occasion as the EU is open to all potential candidates. We shouldn’t focus on the time-span but on the work we need to do, and it is mainly up to us how quickly we secure practical as well as formal admission to the European Union,” she said.

She said Montenegro’s bid was grounded in its growing economic and democratic progress.

“Montenegro needs to build a clear reformist course and focus on a consistent implementation of the law,” Trotemann said and warned that it also needed to do more in areas such as curbing corruption, downsizing its bureaucracy and upgrading its laws to match EU standards.

“A lot needs to be done in the field of statistics. The energy sector is a key issue and requires undivided attention,” Trotemann underscored.

Svilanovic outlined fighting poverty, corruption and organised crime as Montenegro’s basic priorities, having recommended that government to improve its ties with social organisations and the media.

Side-bars:

Svilanovic Praises Government

Goran Svilanovic, a one-time Foreign Minister of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, said the Montenegrin government had positioned itself well in a political triangle incorporating Washington, Moscow and the Brussels-based EU. “The US will no longer be a key factor in the region as Russia’s influence is growing, while the EU has stamped its authority on the region in the past two years,” Svilanovic said. “The Montenegrin government has done very well to find a position in which it can count on the support of all three, which other countries in the region have failed to achieve,” he added.

Svilanovic predicted the EU would ease the visa regime and urged Brussels to offer stronger economic support to potential members in order to make it easier for them to achieve EU standards. “There is a growing rift because Bulgaria, for instance, receives an annual EU assistance of several billion euros while neighbouring Serbia gets a mere €200 million,” he said.


Diverse Ways of Reaching the EU

The Vice-President of the Movement for Change (PZP), Branko Radulovic, welcomed the European Commission delegation in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, and said he hoped the Commission would assist PZP efforts to drive the country into the EU with an already prosperous population.

“Whether we drag ourselves into the European Union as paupers, as - with all due respect - Romania and Bulgaria did, or walk in with our heads held high, like Slovenia, is up to us. We have the potential to get there with a GDP per capita of €10,000 euros but there is a lack of political will to conduct the necessary economic reforms the way Slovenia has done. We need to scrap non-institutional power groups and detrimental, colonialist-fashioned privatisation deals,” Radulovic said.

Trotemann stressed Montenegro’s potential was more like that of east European countries that were in first row when joining the EU, than the capacities of Bulgaria and Romania.
“Economic growth depends on solid management and we have had examples of both good and bad policy among the 10 most recent EU members,” he said.