European neighbourhood and enlargement commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said on Friday it was a strategic interest to bring Southeast European countries which were not members closer to the EU.

He was speaking via video link at a conference on EU enlargement organised by the European Commission’s Representation in Croatia.

Varhelyi said it was important to achieve stronger economic convergence between the EU and the Western Balkan countries in the years ahead. He recalled that a US$ 3.3 billion package had been adopted to help them deal with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Matteo Bonomi of Rome’s Institute of International Affairs told the panel that the crisis caused by the pandemic had shown that it was necessary for the EU to have a common agenda as well as closer cooperation with the Western Balkan countries, adding that countries could not be successful on their own.

He said the issue of EU enlargement coincided with the issue of European values and the rule of law in the EU. Democratic values are the DNA of the enlargement process, he added.

Andreja Metelko-Zgombic, the state secretary at the Croatian Foreign Ministry, said the enlargement policy was one of the EU’s most successful policies.

She said the EU was taking resolute steps in the right direction, such as agreeing to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania.

Metelko-Zgombic said it was wrong to talk about dates and years when enlargement would occur and that it was better to have a concrete accession methodology.

The editor-in-chief of Euroactiv.hr, Zeljko Trkanjec, said there would be no further enlargement for at least ten years, recalling that French President Emmanuel Macron had said there would be no enlargement before the EU stabilised.

Trkanjec said the EU must not allow the accession of countries with a rule of law deficit.