Bulgaria’s Deputy Foreign Minister: Belgrade-Pristina Agreement Fundamental to European Integration

Sofia (Photo: PrintScreen YouTube)

Bulgaria will continue to support Serbia on its path to the European Union (EU), but in order to join the Union it needs to meet certain requirements, an agreement with Kosovo being of vital importance in that respect, says a deputy to the Bulgarian foreign minister, Ivan Kondov.

“I know it’s a difficult issue, but reaching a truly binding agreement between Serbia and Kosovo is of utmost importance. It is not easy, and we are prepared to support you in reaching it in every way, because the agreement is fundamental to European integration,” Kondov said in an interview for Serbian media.

Serbia’s membership of the European Union, as well as of the Western Balkans at large, is important for Bulgaria, too, Kondov said, underlining that EU enlargement should be based on each state’s merits.

Serbia must fulfil the Union’s conditions to join it, and one of them is to align with the Union’s foreign and security policy, Kondov said, adding that Bulgaria believed that Serbia “could make a slightly stronger effort” in that respect, as well as in fighting Russian propaganda.

A former Bulgarian minister for European affairs, Gergana Passy, who is also the president of the non-governmental organization PanEurope Bulgaria, said she wasn’t an optimist about Serbia’s path to the EU, because she couldn’t see that “Serbia truly wants to be part of the EU.”

Passy said that Serbia’s strategic mistake was that it didn’t want to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), because “the EU and the NATO are two sides of the same coin.”