Serbia: Belgrade handed thousands of questions over EU membership

Belgrade, 24 Nov. (AKI) - The European Union commissioner for enlargement Stefan Fuele on Wednesday gave Serbian prime minister Mirko Cvetkovic a questionnaire upon which Brussels will decide whether Serbia qualified to get a candidate status for EU membership.

Fuele handed Cvetkovic 2,483 questions, divided in 33 chapters, and depending on the answers the European Commission should decide whether Serbia carried out the needed reforms and qualified for candidate status.

“I bring the hope that the efforts invested will carry us further on our common path, the hope that the efforts you will make in months ahead will ultimately lead to fully fledged membership in the EU,” Fuele said.

“I am sure that that the government of Serbia will accept today’s chance and implement the needed reforms,” he added.

Cvetkovic said Serbia will answer the questions by the end of January next year so that it might get a candidate status in the second half of 2011.

“We have prepared ourselves very seriously and will immediately start working on the answers to the questions we received,” he added.

“That work practically starts today,” Cvetkovic said.

Serbia submitted an application for the EU membership in December last year, but apart from needed reforms Belgrade will have to arrest the remaining two fugitives wanted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal, wartime Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, a wartime leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, EU officials said.

In addition, the EU demands that Belgrade has to establish “good neighbourly relations” with its former province of Kosovo, which declared independence in February 2008, a moved opposed by Serbia.

Fuele said the questionnaire treated Kosovo in a “status neutral manner”, but added that there are many questions relating to relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

Furthermore, serious reforms are needed in the area of judiciary, the rule of law, human rights, the fight against crime and corruption and regional and international obligations, Fuele said.

Serbian analysts have said Belgrade will have a serious problem with defining the country’s borders, because the inclusion of Kosovo might be unacceptable to the EU, 22 of whose members have recognised Kosovo independence.