Serbia's European Minister Starovic demands Schengen integration in Vienna!

Serbia's European Minister Starovic demands Schengen integration in Vienna!

Novi Sad, Serbien - Serbia Minister of European Minister Tanja Starovic promoted the country's Schengen integration intensively during his visit to Vienna. In a conversation with Austrian representatives, he emphasized that the integration of Serbia into the Schengen area is an important step for the European security architecture. Starovic pointed out that Serbia is considered a geographical anomaly, since migrants and refugees travel from the Schengen area across the country. This situation underlines the need to include Serbia in the Schengen zone in order to create a structure that has grown better to the challenges of migration. According to Kosmo, Serbia receives support from Austria for western Balkan expansion, which highlights the importance of regional cooperation.

In addition to the Schengen integration, Starovic also expressed his views on the EU membership of Serbia, which remains a central foreign policy priority of the country. He emphasized Serbia's clear attitude towards the Russian invasion in Ukraine and emphasized that the country has provided humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Starovic advocated preparing for the EU accession and the Schengen integration in parallel, which is supported by the EU Commission by the recently submitted growth plan for the region.

reflections on current challenges

Another topic that Starovic spoke about was the normalization of relationships between Serbia and Kosovo. He described this as a necessary step and has hopes in the new EU special officer, who is responsible for the dialogue between Belgrade and Prishina. These efforts are particularly important because the stability of the region is endangered by the existing tensions. In this context, a non-paper was also assumed that suggests a reorganization of the Western Balkans according to ethnic principles. These proposals, which include the creation of "ethnically pure" nation states, have led to concern because experts fear a return of military conflicts. The document is said to have been written by the Slovenian Prime Minister, but he denies this.

The reactions to this non-paper are both regionally and internationally negative. The Bosnian Foreign Minister described it as "malignant propaganda" and other politicians also critically commented, with the German foreign minister abbot the ideas as "dangerous". In contrast to the expansion policy formulated by the European Parliament, which aims at promoting peace, stability and economic development in the region, these tensions in the Western Balkans. Meanwhile, Serbia has undertaken to complete all the necessary reforms by the end of 2026 to take over the European legal inventory and the goal of opening cluster 3 in the EU accession negotiations by the end of July.

the rule of law and media freedom

The EU has been pursuing a gradual integration of the countries of the Western Balkans for years, with Croatia as the first country of the EU region in 2013. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Serbia have the status of an accession candidate. Negotiations with Montenegro and Serbia were opened in 2014, while negotiations began in 2022 for Albania and Northern Macedonia. Kosovo also made his application for EU membership in December 2022, which further fueled the dynamics of expansion policy, such as Europarl.eu.