Commission recommends EU candidacy for Macedonia

The European Commission has asked EU governments to accept Macedonia as a candidate for European Union membership, an EU diplomat said.

Leaders of the 25 EU governments are to endorse the candidacy of the former Yugoslav republic – where ethnic Albanians took up arms to fight for more rights in 2001 – at a mid-December summit in Brussels, said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.

Macedonia applied for membership in March, 2004.

The bid to set it on track for membership underscores the EU drive to reach deeper into the Balkans – a volatile part of Europe that spent the better part of the 1990s in war and conflict that sparked the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

Efforts to embrace the EU’s south-eastern neighbours are received with mixed feelings.

Public opinion surveys point to concerns that the EU is expanding too fast without having fully integrated Malta, Cyprus and eight poor Eastern European neighbours that joined last year.

In separate reports today, the European Commission was to issue long lists of requirements for Turkey and Croatia – two nations that opened membership talks October 3.

It was also to issue reports assessing reform efforts so far in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro and Albania, three Balkan nations that also aspire to EU membership but must yet be declared formal candidates.

All EU candidates must enact far-reaching political and free-market reforms to be able to compete with the much stronger economies of the current member nations.

EU entry criteria require candidates to be democracies, have market economies and be ready to endorse the EU’s goals of political and economic union, including the euro.

The EU executive has been at pains to push countries that want to join to work hard toward economic and political reforms and improve human rights.

The Balkan wars of the 1990s have saddled several countries with shaky human rights records.

In Macedonia, a Western-brokered peace deal ended six months of fighting in 2001. The EU now has a policing mission in Macedonia to oversee the peace process.

Altogether, eight countries are waiting in the EU wings.

Bulgaria and Romania have already signed accession treaties and are set to join in 2007 or 2008.