EU to sign Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia
29 April 2008
On 29 April, EU foreign ministers decided to allow Serbia to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, initialled in November 2007. Up until now, signing of the agreement had been blocked by the Netherlands and Belgium, which demanded Belgrade to complete its cooperation with the Hague Tribunal before the document was being signed.
Serbian President Boris Tadić, Democratic Party (DS), will travel to Luxembourg today to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU.Two other Democratic Party (DS) officials and ministers in the outgoing cabinet, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić and Deputy Premier Božidar Đelić, are already in Luxembourg.
EU foreign ministers have today decided to allow Belgrade to sign the deal, initialled in November last year.
Brussels has invited Tadić to sign the SAA at 16:00 CET today.
Slovenia's Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said after the announcement was made that the agreement will be signed in the form in which it was initialled, but that its implementation will be "appraised by the EU Council of Ministers at a later date".
Rupel would not give any further details regarding how the European Union plans to implement the agreement.
Last week, Dutch and Belgian officials suggested that their governments would be willing to give up on the demand that Belgrade completes its cooperation with the Hague Tribunal before the signing, but said the deal would be implemented only after Ratko Mladić and other war crimes fugitives have been arrested.
Earlier in the day, the ministers met to decide whether the SAA will be offered to Serbia for signing.
Holland and Belgium tried to have the contents of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) altered, but the proposal was not adopted yesterday at a meeting of senior European officials.
Rupel, whose country is presiding over the 27-nation bloc, said that the EU was searching for a compromise in order to give Serbia a positive signal and at the same time, appease the demands of Holland and Belgium.
Divisions regarding the signing of the SAA existed not only in the EU, but continue to do so within the Serbian government.
Even though the outgoing government initialled the agreement last November and gave authority to Đelić to sign the agreement, ministers of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and New Serbia (NS), led by DSS leader and Prime Minster Vojislav Koštunica, are strongly opposed to the signing, saying it effectively recognizes the Kosovo Albanians' unilateral declaration independence.
Also earlier in the day, spokeswoman for the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Cristina Gallach, told the state television RTS that the European Union "wants to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia today, but that it is unclear whether it would be possible because a decision has to be unanimous".
"In any case, Serbia's citizens should know that the European Union wants close relations with Serbia," Gallach was quoted as saying.
According to Gallach, "this is an important message that should be sent out now", because the issue of the European Union is "so strongly present in the pre-election process".
Source: www.b92.net
