Serbia Submitting Formal Application for EU Membership

Serbia will become the latest country to submit a formal application for membership of the European Union when its President Boris Tadic flies to the Swedish capital Stockholm on Tuesday.

One of the biggest hurdles to Serbian membership of the EU, of which 27 states are currently members, is the failure of the Serbian authorities to apprehend two fugitives, former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. According to the BBC the Chief Prosecutor for ICTY, Serge Brammertz, reported earlier in December that Serbia's co-operation with his court is "progressing". And UPI reported on Sunday that President Tadic told the Serbian broadcaster B92 that his administration was cooperating fully with ICTY and he did not anticipate that the demand from Sweden, which currently holds the the EU's rotating presidency, that Mladic and Hadzic, the latter man is wanted in connection with his activities in Croatia during the conflict there in the early 1990s, be arrested would hinder his country's application for EU membership. When speaking to B92 President Tadic, who will meet with Swedish Prime Minster Fredrik Reinfeldt when he arrives in Stockholm, noted:

Our program is simple, we want Serbia in the European Union with our identity, today no one can have a dilemma about what direction Serbia is heading in

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic reinforced President Tadic's message saying:

With this decision, Serbia has mapped out the route which it will take in the coming period and has shown that it shares the values of European countries

Serbia's apparent optimism over its application may in part be due to the fact that a trade pact with the EU has now come in to effect and its citizens were recently granted the right to travel to most EU countries without a visa. However with regard to the revision in the visa regulations, introduced in 1991 as the former Yugoslavia was being torn apart by a series of ethnic conflicts, the Guardian quotes some analysts as suggesting that the easing of visa requirements is to compensate for the likelihood that it will be another 10 years before Serbia becomes a EU member. Other countries with ambitions to join the EU and with applications at various stages of the membership process include three other former Yugoslav republics, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro, in addition to Albania, Iceland and Turkey. Mark Almond, a history lecturer at Oxford University, is one who believes that the visa decision is compensation for the time Serbia will have to wait before becoming a member of the EU, observing too that the failure to catch Mladic may be brought up by EU negotiators if talks with Serbia run in to difficulties. Bloomberg says that Mr Almond believes there is "a certain fatigue on the extension of the EU that you can feel". Commenting on the Serbian application French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said:

The western Balkans are part of Europe, that’s always been France’s position. We had to overcome the opposition of the Netherlands who blocked it for ages. The arrest of Mladic remains our obsession

Serbia's reputation suffered badly as a result of the 1990s Balkan conflicts when, led by Slobodan Milosevic, the country was responsible, directly or indirectly, for many of the atrocities that took place in Southeastern Europe.