Hahn: EU to back starting entry talks with Macedonia
The European Union will recommend starting accession talks with the Republic of Macedonia and Albania, widening the bloc’s push into the Western Balkans, according to Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.
“The EU Commission will soon recommend, most likely by the summer, that member states begin accession negotiations with Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. We believe that both countries have made important reforms in the past, and are thus qualified for this step,” Hahn said in an interview with Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published Thursday.
The Republic of Macedonia has been a candidate for EU membership since 2005 and has recently made a push to solve a name dispute with neighboring Greece that dates back to the independence of the former region of Yugoslavia in 1991. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that a solution “has never been as close as it is now.”
Albania, an EU candidate since 2014, “has done a lot in the fight against organized crime,” Hahn said.
The two countries will join Montenegro and Serbia, which started accession talks in 2012 and 2014, respectively, and could become members of the EU as early as 2025.
The EC should publish the progress reports of the candidate countries for EU membership on April 17.