Željana Zovko, Vice-President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Delegation for Relations with BiH and Kosovo, emphasized the key role of the enlargement policy in the context of the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Copenhagen criteria, which paved the way for four successful waves of enlargement of the European Union and provided clear conditions for a European perspective to the countries that aspire to European future.
“When the Copenhagen criteria were adopted, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were under aggression, and the war caught Europe unprepared. Two years after the Dayton-Paris Peace Agreement was signed, and in 1999, the Western Balkans were given the opportunity to join the European Union,” Zovko pointed out, noting that because of those criteria, the Republic of Croatia got a clear European perspective after the Homeland War and undertook significant reform moves that culminated in the entry into the EU in 2013.
Zovko emphasized that due to today’s unstable geopolitical context, enlargement remains the most successful and necessary tool of the Union in order to respond to external threats from third countries, but also to ensure peace and stability in its immediate neighborhood, especially in the Western Balkans.
“Only the war in Ukraine opened the story of peace and security in a realistic way. Dear Sirs, Rome was not built in a day. Open negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, everything started from her,” concluded Zovko, emphasizing the importance of this issue, noting that Treaty reforms are not necessary to achieve enlargement.
Let us remind you that the plenary debate on enlargement took place in the light of the recently presented enlargement package, in which the European Commission issued a recommendation on the conditional opening of negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the statement of the European People’s Party.
