Swoboda: Completing EU talks by 2020 realistic for Serbia

BELGRADE - Completing the EU membership talks by 2020 is a realistic target for Serbia, Hannes Swoboda, the president of the Social Democrats' group in the European Parliament, has said.

Economic reforms should be the new Serbian government's priority, Swoboda said in an interview published by the Belgrade-based Vecernje novosti daily on Monday.

Fighting corruption and creating conditions for new investments, as well as improving relations with all neighbours - which includes the Kosovo issue - should be the focus, he said.

Economic reforms and good-neighbourly relations go hand in hand together and will be assessed in Serbia's EU accession talks, Swoboda said.

He said that it is impossible for Serbia to complete the EU membership talks by as early as 2018 as he had thought, adding that negotiations last longer now, and that many issues remain open.

Asked about disputes on the responsibility for the outbreak of World War I, the Austrian MEP said that they today represent madness and excessive nationalism, just like disputes about who is to blame for the outbreak of the war in the former Yugoslavia.

However, Serbia and Austria could send a good message to the world by marking the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War together, he said.

It would be good to mark the occasion with, say, meetings of the prime ministers and other officials, Swoboda said, adding that this would make it clear that the two countries are looking to the future.

Many Serbians live in my country, in Vienna in particular, and today there is no reason whatsoever to think about the responsibility for the events in 1914, Swoboda pointed out.

Photo Tanjug, M. Jelesijevic (archive)