Eurasia Press & News
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini will visit Serbia today.
Ahead of his visit Frattini said that Italian diplomats are investing maximum efforts to soon unfreeze the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the European Union and Serbia and carry out a technical evaluation of Serbia’s application for accession in the Union.
“Italy fully supports an acceleration of the process of granting Serbia the candidate status and hopes that the goal would be achieved by mid-2011, the latest,” Frattini said.
Frattini underscored that Italy believes that Belgrade has all the prerequisites to strive towards the role that belongs to Serbia in Europe. According to him, unfreezing of the provisional agreement with the European Union and the abolishment of the visa regime for Serbia’s citizens were the two key steps forward in the country’s process of integration into Europe.
In regards to the conference scheduled for June 2 in Sarajevo, Frattini said that it is a central opportunity to confirm that the Western Balkan’s future is within the EU and to renew the progress of all region countries on their way to their accession in the Union, based on the obligations accepted at the European Council meeting in Thessaloniki in 2003.
