EU reassures Balkan states on future membership

The European Union reassured Balkan countries yesterday that the current wave of EU enlargement would not be the last and that they too would one day be able to join the wealthy bloc.

Ten, mostly ex-communist countries closed membership talks last month at a summit in Copenhagen and are set to sign the EU accession treaty at a ceremony in Athens on April 16.

"Enlargement does not stop in Athens...We have to send a clear message that the doors of the EU are open and that in the long term the Balkans belong to the Union," Romano Prodi, head of the European Commission, told a news conference.

"A lot of hard work is needed but eventually all Balkan countries can become members of the Union," he said after talks with Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis.

Greece, which holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency until June 30, is especially keen to help its Balkan neighbours move closer to the bloc over the coming months.

Two Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Romania, are already well advanced in the accession negotiations but are not among the 10 frontrunners. Bulgaria and Romania hope to join the EU in 2007.

Croatia is expected soon to lodge a formal request to open accession talks. Other ex-Yugoslav republics such as Serbia and Macedonia, as well as Albania, are not far behind in the queue.

"All European countries can accede (to the EU) as long as they meet the conditions (of membership)," Simitis told the same news conference.

These conditions include full respect for human rights, for ethnic and other minorities and the rule of law.

Croatia and Serbia are still under pressure from the EU to hand over men and women indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for alleged offences committed during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

Prodi said the prospect of eventual EU membership had already helped Balkan countries to start reforming their economies and moving closer to European political norms.

He also welcomed a growing debate on how far the EU should expand. Prodi has spoken out in the past against full EU membership for ex-Soviet republics such as Ukraine or Moldova, saying only that they should develop much closer ties.

"There are limits to the enlargement of Europe. There are geographic and cultural borders," Prodi said yesterday.

Asked about Turkey, an EU candidate which has yet to open talks, Prodi reiterated a decision taken by EU leaders last month to review Ankara's membership bid in December 2004.

The EU says Turkey must carry out more reforms, including the complete eradication of torture and reducing the role of the army in politics before it can open accession talks.

Simitis, who has emerged as a leading advocate of Turkish membership of the EU, stressed that Cyprus - one of the 10 acceding countries - would join the bloc in 2004 regardless of whether there was a political settlement on the divided island.

Greek and Turkish Cypriots are currently struggling to reach an agreement that would end the decades-old division of their small island and allow it to join the EU reunited.