Merkel: EU leaders agree on Croatian membership

[June 24, 2011]  BRUSSELS (AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that European leaders had agreed they want Croatia to become a member of the EU.

"We have agreed on accession for Croatia," Merkel said at the conclusion of a two-day EU summit in Brussels.

Merkel says Croatia had significant gaps in March but those have been worked out, so there was no reason to delay accession.

"There are no reservations, as we had with Bulgaria and Romania," she said.

A draft summit conclusion had said talks on Croatia's membership should be concluded this month and an accession treaty signed by December. The parliaments of all 27 members will then have to ratify the document, a process expected to last until June 2013, when Croatia will formally be inducted into membership.

Croatia, which started membership talks in 2005, will become the second former Yugoslav nation to join, following Slovenia. The last members to join the EU were Romania and Bulgaria, in 2007.

The leaders also welcomed the arrest in Serbia of former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, saying it showed that Serbia had taken a new step toward EU membership. Accession talks could start next spring.

Mladic's status was the largest obstacle Serbia faced in achieving closer cooperation with the EU. After his arrest and extradition to the war crimes tribunal earlier this month, President Boris Tadic said the nation would now focus on becoming a free-market democracy where international business can thrive.

Other West Balkans states -- Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro -- are all in various stages of the accession process.

Leading the way is tiny Montenegro, which gained formal candidate status last December. It is expected to join in the next round of enlargement expected in 2015 or 2016.

Each candidate nation must successfully negotiate 35 negotiating "chapters" -- areas in which they must enact EU rules and legislation -- before they can be cleared for membership. Most chapters deal with economic issues linked to the bloc's complex set of internal market rules, which form the basis of EU economic policies, but others cover areas such as human rights, the independence of the judiciary and anti-corruption measures.

[Associated Press; By SLOBODAN LEKIC]

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