Accession of Serbia To The European Union - Negotiations

Negotiations

The European Union has been considering enlargement in the Balkans since at least the late 1990s. The negotiations became serious after Serbia began the reform process after the fall of the Milošević regime in 2000, back then as part of the state union of Serbia and Montenegro when the EU officially declared that the Balkan states are potential candidates for membership, confirmed in 2003.

Negotiations on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement started in November 2005.

On 3 May 2006, the European Union suspended SAA talks with Serbia over its failure to arrest Ratko Mladić, stating that Serbia failed to fulfill its commitment to fully co-operate with International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This slowed the pace of Serbia's EU entry and the reform process in Serbia. In July 2006, an action plan for the arrest of Ratko Mladić was issued by the government, aimed to locate and bring the former general to justice, which is expected to improve relations with EU. In May 2007, Serbian parties reached an agreement on a new government, and placed President Boris Tadić as head of the newly created National Security Council. Within weeks of the Council's establishment, Serbian officials made two key arrests of indicted war criminals. As a result, on 13 June 2007, the European Union decided to reopen negotiations. On 21 July 2008, Radovan Karadžić was arrested. On 26 May 2011 Mladić was arrested.

On 8 November 2007, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Božidar Đelić and the European Union Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn initialed in Brussels the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Serbia and the European Union.

Olli Rehn said that the EU decision to initial the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia was the result of improved cooperation with the ICTY, as reported by the chief prosecutor of this Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte.

Rehn underlined that full cooperation of Belgrade with the ICTY remains a precondition for signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, which was initialed two years after the launching of the first negotiation round. On 16 January 2008 the Netherlands and Belgium confirmed that their countries would not sign the SAA (signatures are needed from all EU member states) until Serbia complied fully with the ICTY. On 14 January 2008 ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz stated that there was no change and Serbia was still not fully cooperating.

Following this agreement, the EU planned to grant candidate status to Serbia as early as 2009, contingent on its full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, which eventually led Serbia to become an EU candidate country on 1 March 2012.