The European Parliament will ask to suspend Serbia’s EU membership talks for as long as Belgrade refuses to join the bloc’s sanctions against Russia
The report, initially made public in June, stresses the need to “prioritise the alignment of accession countries with the EU’s common foreign and security policy and continue accession negotiations with Serbia only if the country aligns with EU sanctions against Russia.”
The Social Democrat group in the European Parliament appeared to confirm this, tweeting this week that “the EU cannot continue accession talks with Serbia if they don’t align with EU sanctions against Russia“. “That’s what we will say in the Parliament’s upcoming enlargement report,” it added.
Commenting on Serbia’s latest rapprochement with Moscow – last week’s signing in New York of an agreement to coordinate the two countries’ foreign policy – Parliament’s rapporteur for the enlargement report, Croatian Social Democrat lawmaker Tonino Picula said:
“Very disappointing coming from a country aspiring to join the EU.”
Serbia started accession talks in January 2014 but has made slow progress so far. It has opened eighteen of the 35 negotiating chapters and provisionally closed only two.
