Croatia Given Timetable for Eu Entry

The EU's plans to expand across the Balkans and take in another seven countries crept forward today when Croatia was given a road map for membership for the first time.

Another four countries in former Yugoslavia as well as Albania and Turkey, however, failed to obtain any firm promises of rapid progress on their ambitions to join the EU.

Presenting detailed annual reports on the six EU aspirants, the European Commission official in charge of enlargement, Olli Rehn of Finland, said Croatia should complete the highly detailed process of membership negotiations by the end of next year, meaning that Croatia is likely to become the 28th country in the EU by 2011 at the latest.

"This is an encouragement, but not a blank cheque," said Rehn of the government in Zagreb's chances of getting Croatia into the EU amid fears that European fatigue with expansion is damaging the hopes of Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo.

"This is very good news for us. We're happy. It's the first time we've been given a firm timetable," said a Croatian diplomat.

A wave of mafia shootings and bombings in broad daylight on the streets of Zagreb recently has highlighted Croatia's failures to get to grips with organized crime and police corruption. But while Rehn pointed to deep-seated problems with crime, police, and the courts, he said that Zagreb should "reach the final stage of the accession negotiations" by the end of next year.

He was non-committal about the prospects for the other countries, while singling out Serbia as the strongest potential performer in advancing its case next year.

Diplomats and experts on the Balkans stress that Brussels needs to be more committed to integrating the former war zones in the region to avoid being sucked into worse instability.

But the appetite for repeated enlargement is shrinking across western Europe. France, always ambivalent about a bigger EU, is strongly opposed to Turkey joining, as are Germany and Austria, and also insists that there can be no new EU members unless the deadlocked Lisbon Treaty streamlining the way the EU functions is implemented. Ireland voted against the Lisbon package in June.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France says that Croatia cannot join unless the Irish problem is solved. Rehn said today that the Irish veto would be overcome before Croatia is poised to join the EU, but there is little sign of that happening. Slovenia, an EU member, is also threatening to hold up Croatia's chances because of a clutch of bilateral disputes between the two former Yugoslav neighbors.