Italy, Austria to Support Serbia’s EU Bid

"Italy has been supporting Serbia’s path towards the EU for a long time and all political options in Italy are united when it comes to this,” Armando Varrichio, the Italian ambassador, said on Monday.

He added that the support will be confirmed this week during an official visit to Belgrade by Gianfranco Fini, the President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament.

According to Italian media, Fini will visit Serbia on February 8, when he will discuss Serbia’s EU integration process.

His colleague, Clemens Koja, the Austrian ambassador to Belgrade, agreed that Serbia should gain candidate status for EU membership at the upcoming meeting of EU leaders.
“Austria will without doubt continue its support for the integration of Serbia into the EU and therefore we want to help Serbia to overcome the last obstacles on the road and that is cooperation with Pristina,” said Koja in his interview for Belgrade based magazine Cord.

Confirmation of Austrian support was also heard from Norbert Darabos, Austrian Ministry of Defense.

“I think Serbia should gain candidate status as soon as possible. The government that is currently in power in Serbia is sending clear signals that is interested in conflict resolution in Kosovo,” Darabos said at the 48th Security Conference held in Munich on Saturday.

Positive messages for the Serbian authorities also came last week from the EU ambassador in Belgrade, Vincent Degert, who expects that Serbia will be granted candidate status at the upcoming meeting of EU heads of state in March.

Herman van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, has said that EU foreign ministers will decide whether to give Serbia candidate status in February, while the final word will come from the EU heads of state meeting in March.

At the last meeting of members of the European Council in December, EU leaders postponed a decision on Serbia’s EU candidacy bid.

Concerned about continuing problems between Serbia and Kosovo, and about violence in the Serb-run northern part of Kosovo, it was decided that EU foreign ministers needed first to "examine and confirm that Serbia has continued to show credible commitment and achieved further progress in moving forward with the implementation in good faith of agreements" with Kosovo.