BRIEF HISTORY OF EU'S OPENING TOWARDS SOUTHEAST EUROPE

ZAGREB, Nov 21 (Hina) - At the Nov. 24 Zagreb Summit, the European Union should give its clearest definition thus far of its policy towards five Southeast Europe countries covered by the stabilisation and association process. In the Summit's final declaration, the EU is expected to accentuate that it will nurture relations with Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Albania on an individual basis, evaluating each country separately, and urge them to cooperate among themselves. This would be an attempt to reconcile two approaches, the individual and the regional, which has and continues to be a source of concern for some countries in the region that on their road towards European integration, they will be forced to wait for the slowest ones and access Europe in a package. In April 1997, EU foreign ministers adopted a new policy towards Southeast Europe, the so-called regional approach, which starts from the need to create a zone of stability, security and progress in the region, and intensify cooperation with neighbours. The regional approach relies on political and economic conditions. The EU made the renewal of trade preferentials and the possibility of using means from the PHARE programme conditional on compliance with a series of criteria, namely democratic principles and human rights, especially those of minorities, the freedom of the media, the willingness to develop economic relations among the region's countries, and facilitating the return of displaced persons. For its assistance, the EU set conditions: admission of citizens of the region's countries in illegal sojourn in EU countries, meeting conditions from peace accords, including cooperation with UN's war crimes tribunal in The Hague, holding free elections and full implementation of their results, implementing the first stages of economic reforms, willingness to nurture good neighbourly relations and cooperation with neighbours. Two years later, in May 1999, the European Commission suggested initiating the stabilisation and association process for five states in Southeast Europe, or the Western Balkans as the EU often calls the region. The process is an expansion of the regional approach which envisages signing a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, a new form of contractual relations with the EU whose goal is the stabilisation of countries in the region by bringing them closer to European integration. The agreements will be adapted to each country's circumstances, the so-called tailor-made approach. The application of the agreement will pave the way for a gradual establishment of a free trade zone with the EU. What remains unclear is if the Union will seek the five countries in question to either beforehand or simultaneously establish a free trade zone among themselves. Macedonia was the first to begin and wrap up negotiations on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, which will be initialled at the Zagreb Summit. That same day, Nov. 24, Croatia formally begins negotiations on the agreement which, according to Croatian estimates, should wrap up in six months. EU foreign ministers on Monday gave the European Commission a mandate to commence the said negotiations. Of the three remaining countries, Albania has thus far come closest to beginning the negotiations. The EC has already submitted to competent EU bodies a feasibility study for the negotiations. As for Bosnia, the EU has drafted a package of measures to be complied with to create conditions for initiating institutional ties with the EU. With regard to Serbia, which has recently welcomed democracy after years of isolation under the Milosevic regime, the EU is considering ways of including it in the stabilisation and association process. One of the major problems the EU is encountering in this instance is the undefined relationship between Yugoslavia's two republics, Serbia and Montenegro. Moreover, there is Kosovo which at present is practically outside Yugoslavia. The EU also launched the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe, a political document adopted in Cologne in June 1999. It represents a framework for cooperation among the region's countries, EU members, the United States, Russia, international organisations such as NATO, the UN, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe, and international financial institutions. The EU decided the stabilisation agreements should be preceded by an asymmetrical liberalisation of trade with countries in the region in view of helping them revive their economies. Over 80 percent of export from the said countries has been exempt from tariffs. On Nov. 7, Croatia and the EU signed an agreement abolishing quotas for the export of textile goods, which was the first document signed between Zagreb and Brussels. In the early 1990s, Europe failed to impose itself as a unique factor in solving the crisis on the territory of the ex-Yugoslavia, which had broken up in a bloodshed. A decade later, the EU is offering the countries established after the break-up the prospect of becoming its members, if they meet conditions demanded of candidate-countries. The EU too, however, has to adjust and reform its institutions to be able to function efficaciously after expansion. (hina) ha