Hungarian Minister: Serbia's EU membership must not be conditioned with Kosovo

Hungary's Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Sziyjarto has said on Tuesday that Serbia “is ready to become part of the European Union (BE), adding that its membership in the bloc should not be conditioned with normalising relations with Kosovo.

In an interview for the Croatian news agency, Hina, he said conditioning Serbia's EU membership with normalising relations with Kosovo is “unjust to Belgrade, because “this does not depend solely on Serbia”.

Serbia's “is the worst possible tactic”, Szijjarto said.

The leader of Hungarian diplomacy said Serbia is “ready to enter the EU tomorrow”, and that without it, as the largest and strongest “ ” country in the Western Balkans “has no stability in the bloc”.

Szijjarto explained Serbia's president's frequent anti-Western and anti-European rhetoric, Aleksandar Vuciq, with a sense of disappointment due to the lack of progress towards membership, despite the “criteria fulfilled”.

“I believe that approaching the bureaucracy from Brussels should change against it [Serbia]”, the Hungarian minister said.

Serbia is a candidate for becoming an EU member since 2012, while membership talks opened in 2014.

The EU regularly warns that the speed of Serbia's membership process in the bloc will depend on its progress in dialogue on normalising relations between Belgrade and Pristina, which is mediated by Brussels.

Szijjarto also said the EU project will not be completed until all Western Balkan countries become its members.

“Brussels needs the region [Western Balkans] more than the region to”, he said.

Szijjarto announced that during the EU presidency in the second half of this year, Hungary will stress the acceleration of this process, as “this will give the EU freshness and new momentum”. / REL/