Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-200"
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"en.20060315.20.3-200"2
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". Mr President, in the western Balkans the EU can really make a difference. This was discussed at the Foreign Ministers’ ‘Gymnich’ meeting in Salzburg.
In his memoirs, Chancellor Kohl writes that each generation must work for a necessary consciousness of history to avoid repeating our mistakes and to ensure that ‘the voices of victims are heard’. These are very wise words.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is putting on record evidence that will help the Serbs of current and future generations to understand that many crimes were committed in the name of Serbia, while certain individuals were responsible for these crimes.
The death of Milosevic makes it even more important for The Hague Tribunal to complete its work and for the remaining indictees to be transferred there. This will help Serbia to close the tragic chapter of history over which Milosevic presided and to come to terms with the legacy of its past.
Today Serbia is truly at the crossroads and I sincerely hope that the leaders and people of Serbia have the will and wisdom to choose the European future instead of the nationalist past. The country now truly holds its future in its own hands. We can help the Serbs to make the right choice by keeping the European prospect open for them.
The region is at the crossroads and the EU will guide it down the peaceful and reformist path. We have seen many positive developments in recent years, but we should not be lulled into a false sense of security.
This year the remaining status issues, Kosovo and Montenegro, must be solved with patience and determination. We must also move the region beyond the era of war. We must thus clear the way for progress on issues that really matter to the citizens of the region: economic and social development and bringing the countries into the European mainstream.
How can we best encourage the countries to stick to an ambitious reform agenda? Most importantly, we must stick to our commitment that the countries can make progress towards the EU with membership as the ultimate goal, once they have managed to meet the rigorous accession criteria. Moreover, we must strive to make this perspective concrete and tangible, as the Commission has done in its recent communication. Let me mention a few examples of our concrete objectives and proposals.
Firstly, we should remove obstacles to trade, production and investment. The Commission, together with the stability pact and the countries concerned, is pursuing the creation of a regional free trade agreement, which would replace the existing patchwork of 31 bilateral free trade agreements. This may be attained through a simultaneous enlargement and modernisation of CEFTA, on which there will be a CEFTA summit meeting in April in Bucharest.
Secondly, we should ‘Europeanise’ the next generation – or why not the current generation? That is why we have proposed increasing the mobility of researchers and students by increasing the number of scholarships provided for them.
Thirdly, we need to facilitate people-to-people contacts. We shall put forward measures on visa facilitation, and I trust that the Member States will move them quickly forward through the Council, so that we can start negotiations on visa facilitation and readmission agreements. Let me underline the fact that the more the countries in the region can do to ensure border controls and document security, the easier it will be to convince the EU Member States to make progress on visa facilitation.
I am glad that the EU’s Foreign Ministers in Salzburg last weekend endorsed these practical measures and, even though she is not present today, I want to pay particular tribute to Mrs Plassnik and her personal commitment to ensuring progress in the western Balkans.
Finally, I must say a few words about the death of Slobodan Milosevic. When we received the news of his death at the end of the Gymnich meeting, my immediate reaction was to remember my visit to Srebrenica last July, at the tenth commemoration of the most appalling massacre in post-war Europe. I regret that Milosevic died before justice could be served for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the crimes for which he was indicted."@en1
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