Thorough pre accession measures are needed in the interest of Serbia’s national minorities

"I was pleased to hear that membership negotiations with Serbia have started, and hopefully our community will be enlarged in a few years by a new member state. However, obtaining the EU membership will be a great challenge both for the Serbian authorities and the European Commission. The negotiating parties will be well advised to remember what happened when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU: today it is very clear that the two countries were not prepared for adhering, and we have to live with the consequences. Romania’s judiciary system has been under monitoring supervision by the EU since 2007, and for the time being the rapports of the Commission are far from stating that this will be otherwise any time soon. This was part of the agreement at the time of the accession, but experts argue that had these problems been resolved prior to the accession, even is this meant delaying it by a couple of years, there would be no need for the monitoring supervision at all. In my view it is in the interest of the citizens of Serbia – Serbs, Hungarians, Romanians, Bosnians, Croats and the other minorities –  to engage in exhaustive talks, face their differences openly, and delay accession until all their problems are resolved in a reassuring manner."