Croatia strongly supports further enlargement of the EU which would include all Western Balkans countries, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs said on Tuesday in a statement commenting on the 2018 European Commission's Enlargement Report.
“The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs expresses strong support for the further process of European Union enlargement to all countries in Southeast Europe, because that is of strategic interest to the EU. The EU’s enlargement policy is an investment in security, peace, prosperity and thus in the stability in Europe,” the ministry said.
The European Commission on Tuesday issued progress reports on EU membership candidates and potential candidates, saying that the Western Balkans countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, as well as Kosovo) were making slow progress on their path to the EU, while Turkey was backsliding.
The ministry said that credible membership prospects were key for the development of democratic and prosperous societies in Southeast Europe, and specifically mentioned the neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where ethnic Croats are one of the three main “constituent” peoples in Bosnia’s ethnic-based power-sharing system set out in the 1995 Dayton Agreement.
“Croatia believes that the further implementation of EU enlargement policy is especially important for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to which EU membership offers a better future which can be achieved only by honouring the basic Dayton principle of the equality of the three constituent peoples,” the ministry said.
The ministry also hailed the EC’s recommendation to open accession negotiations with Albania and Macedonia, saying that this is a confirmation that implementing reforms indeed pays off.
The ministry put emphasis on some of the most vulnerable areas in EC’s report, including dealing with the legacy of violent conflicts of the 1990s.
“It is important that the Enlargement Report warns of the need to invest more effort in the most vulnerable areas, including prosecuting war crimes and shedding light on the fate of missing persons, but also the need to create a constructive atmosphere for overcoming the legacy of the past and for reconciliation. As highlighted in the European Commission’s Enlargement Strategy of February 2018, open bilateral issues need to be resolved before EU entry,” the ministry said.