– asked the EU leaders, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Alexander Schallenberg, in an interview with the Financial Timesnot to give priority to Ukraine at the expense of the countries of the Western Balkans in terms of joining the EU bloc, considering that this month the European Commission recommended the European Council to approve the start of negotiations on the integration of Ukraine, when it is ready, into the bloc community.

Ahead of next month’s summit, when leaders must unanimously decide whether to formally approve the start of accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova and review a potential expansion of the bloc to 35 members, Alexander Schallenberg told the Financial Times that Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia should not be overlooked, the News reported. ro.

“Our geostrategic seismograph hits in both directions,” he said, adding that it would be a “geostrategic disaster” if the European executive looked at the Western Balkans “with a magnifying glass” and looked at Ukraine “with rose-colored glasses.”

“You can’t have some groups in the fast lane and others in the service lane,” Schallenberg commented.

This month, the European Commission recommended the start of negotiations with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, but said that negotiations with Bosnia should wait until “the necessary degree of compliance with the accession criteria is achieved.”

On the other hand, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has already said he may block the start of accession talks with Ukraine to protest that Brussels continues to withhold EU funds through Budapest over rule of law concerns. . But other countries are also worried about the expansion, writes the Financial Times.

Asked if Austria was considering vetoing the start of accession talks with Ukraine if Bosnia did not get the green light, Schallenberg said talks were “already going in the right direction”.

“Let’s not create a problem in the region that has been waiting for 20 years and give them another obstacle (to pass). As (Albanian Prime Minister) Edi Rama said, if I quote him correctly: do we need to start a war in the Balkans to get your attention?’ – commented the head of diplomacy from Vienna.

“It will be a very heated debate and we want the signals to be equal in both directions, for geostrategic reasons… We need to send a signal to third parties: these countries are ours, they are part of our family,” he argued. the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria, who, on the other hand, opposes the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen.

“Nothing is moving for the people (of Serbia). For the first time, we have a poll in Serbia where a relative majority is no longer in favor of the European Union. This should ring all our bells. We are losing them, – warns Oleksandr Shallenberg.

Serbia, a Russia-friendly country that did not join the Western sanctions regime in response to Moscow’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, formally began EU accession talks in 2014, but progress has stalled.

The Austrian minister is a strong supporter of the EU’s gradual enlargement, in which candidate countries are integrated into programs and sectoral policies before full membership. The EU needs a different approach to the previous waves of enlargement in 2004, 2007 and 2013, when the question was twofold: to join or not to join, he said. If the old approach is preserved, then “Ukraine will probably never be a part of the Union to some extent,” said Shallenberg.

A partial approach would help bind candidate countries to the EU before giving them the benefits of full membership, such as access to agricultural subsidies. “Can we imagine expansion without agrarian policy? Yes, we can,” he said, adding that there could be long transition periods for new members.

On the other hand, Schallenberg said that the EU should not allow Russia and China to increase their influence in the region so that even infrastructure projects are financed by Brussels.

____

• Follow the latest events of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HotNews.ro