McAllister hopes first chapters will be opened before July

BRUSSELS - European Parliament Raporteur for Serbia David McAllister expressed the hope in Brussels Monday that the first chapters in the negotiating process between Serbia and the EU would be opened during the first six months of 2015.

Presenting a draft progress report on Serbia before the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee, McAllister said that during his recent visit to Belgrade, he could see that Serbia was sincerely committed to stepping up the European integration process.

He said that the key points in the European integration process were the rule of law, fight against corruption, structural economic reforms, alignment with the European foreign policy and resumption of the process of normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

When it comes to the rule of law, McAllister pointed to the part of the report dealing with the media, which stated that media freedoms had worsened a little and media ownership was not transparent.

McAllister also said that Serbia had to align with EU's foreign policy and join the sanctions against Russia despite its deep cultural and historical ties with Russia.

On the other hand, he said, Serbia could use that privileged relationship during its chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

He particularly welcomed the imminent resumption of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina on the normalization of relations and the recent adoption of an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO.

Eduard Kukan, head of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia, agreed that Serbia had made progress and that there were problems relating to media freedoms, stressing that threats to...