Belgrade still needs to make efforts to align itself with EU and initiate reforms necessary for its future accession, according to the MEPs

On Thursday 20 February, members of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) presented their report on Serbia, and in particular its path towards membership of the European Union.

With a few nuances, the MEPs' opinion is in line with the findings of recent European Commission reports on the state of reform in the country (see EUROPE 13573/2). 

For the text's rapporteur, Tonino Picula (S&D, Croatian), Serbia “must seriously demonstrate that it is determined to move towards and align with the European Union and communicate unambiguously on the subject”.

In particular, the report condemns Belgrade's “lack of overall progress” in several “critical” areas of reform, such as the rule of law, administration and alignment with the European Common Security Policy (see EUROPE 13547/2).

Here again, Parliament stresses the need for the country to make tangible progress on the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue (see EUROPE 13566/34), on which “the overall pace of accession negotiations continues to depend”.

The European External Action Service, which was present when the report was presented, said that Serbia had demonstrated that it had “maintained a balanced foreign policy”, but that it needed to make “further efforts in this area” in order to obtain the green light from the Union.

See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/fl8 (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)