BUDAPEST, Feb 4(Hina) - European Parliament President Pat Cox has said he expects the European Commission to give a positive opinion of Croatia's EU membership application, but has cautioned that one should not run after deadlines
since the admission date will be the consequence and not the goal of Croatia's agenda.
BUDAPEST, Feb 4(Hina) - European Parliament President Pat Cox has said
he expects the European Commission to give a positive opinion of
Croatia's EU membership application, but has cautioned that one should
not run after deadlines since the admission date will be the
consequence and not the goal of Croatia's agenda.#L#
Cox said the European Parliament had a positive view of Croatia and
that the country was in a very favourable position.
Talking to Croatian reporters covering his meeting with parliament
presidents from countries participating in European Union enlargement
in Budapest on Wednesday, Cox said he did not know which conclusions
the European Commission's opinion would offer but that the Parliament
would give a clear and fast answer to it as soon as it arrived.
Asked if Croatia could hope to join the Union in 2007, Cox said it was
good to have ambitions but that the deadline within which a country
was admitted was the consequence, not the goal of its agenda. He
recalled that many years ago Hungary's representatives asked if their
country would join the EU in 2000 or 2001. Hungary is joining now, so
everything has its own course, he said.
The second session of the Budapest meeting, held this afternoon,
addressed parliamentary cooperation between the expanded EU and the
Western Balkans.
In her opening address, the head of the European Parliament's
delegation for relations with the region, Doris Pack, reiterated that
the Parliament based everything on two tenets, including in the case
of the Western Balkans.
The first is that democracy and the rule of law are terms over which
there is no haggling for any country wishing to join the EU, Pack
said. Someone from the region has complained that the EU asks more of
the countries in the region than of member states, which is sometimes
true but political terms such as minorities' rights or return of
refugees and displaced persons appeared after the EU stopped being
only an economic community, she added.
The other tenet is that every country should be evaluated on the basis
of its merits, while meeting equal criteria, Pack said, vowing that
European institutions would help in making sure that democracy
functioned well in every country of Europe's Southeast.
Current relations between the European Parliament delegation for
relations with the region should be deepened and formally structured,
while multilateral dialogue has to be efficient, Pack said.
She hoped the Budapest meeting, the first between the European
Parliament president and his counterparts in the Western Balkans,
would contribute to that and enable the parliamentary dimension of the
Stabilisation and Association process to be as dynamic as that of the
EU enlargement process since 1995.
(Hina) ha