European Parliament (Photo: European Union 2019/EP/Gabor Kovacs)
Former European Commissioner Johannes Hahn said on Jan. 22 that there were no discounts for entering the EU and that every candidate needed to meet its standards, adding that there were many open issues in Serbia's case.
"You must understand that joining the EU family is a very fundamental decision, both for the candidate state, and the Union itself. If we are talking about Serbia, there are still many open issues there, among which a fairly low level of alignment in the areas of foreign policy with Brussels' policy," Hahn said in an interview with NIN, when the magazine remarked that support for membership in the EU in Serbia had been declining for years.
As for the possibility of all of the countries of the Western Balkans being accepted in the EU in an urgent procedure, he said that "the process of accession of every candidate state to the EU is individual and based on merit, meeting the standards that membership in the EU demands." "On the other side, all of the EU's member states must do their share of the job, they must prepare for a Union with over 30 countries, and for that the decision-making system needs to change. It is necessary to introduce decisions by a qualified majority instead of unanimously," Hahn added.
He said that, "If the entire region of the Western Balkans becomes a part of the European family that would be a situation in which the countries in the region and the EU would both win," stressing that: "To achieve this, the candidate states must meet the standards for admission, we cannot abandon our standards."
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