Janez Jansa (BetaPhoto/STA/Thierry Monasse)
During its presidency of the Council of Europe, Slovenia has managed to ensure that European Union documents pertaining to the Balkans reintroduce the term "membership perspective" instead of the previous "European perspective," Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa said on Dec. 30.
"One of [our government's] strategic successes has been to put enlargement back on the table as one of the EU's key strategic projects. This took many debates [to achieve]," Jansa stated in an interview for a Slovenian TV station, the Hina news agency has reported.
The prime minister explained that his efforts during meetings in Brussels resulted in the official replacement of the term "European perspective" with "membership perspective" for non-member countries aspiring to join the Union -- a change which, according to him, was opposed by some of the EU's founding members.
"The Ukraine and, for example, Serbia, have a European perspective because they are in Europe and will always remain in Europe, but they desire a membership perspective, and that [wording] was difficult to introduce to [official] documents and took concentrated effort," Jansa said.
The Slovenian prime minister further claimed that, during the debates, one European leader whom he did not wish to name said: "Why would we introduce them to the EU when they provide cheaper labor as is?" In his opinion, in certain older member countries "narrow-mindedness or nationalistic interests" outweigh the vision of a free, peaceful and united Europe.
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