Ahead of his trip to Ljubljana, Barroso spoke to the the Slovene media and commented on outstanding Slovene-Croatian issues, expressing hope those issues would be solved bilaterally without Brussels' involvement.
Speaking about his recent visit to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Barroso said European Union membership came with necessary conditions which must be met, including cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague. he stressed there was no such thing as a collective joining of the countries in the region.
Each country must be evaluated according to its own merits, he said. We offer membership, but that requires a lot of work and efforts, Barroso said commenting on the messages from his recent tour of the countries in the region.