BRUSSELS – Pierre Mirel, a former Director of the Directorate-General for Enlargement at the European Commission, contradicted the claims by Ana Brnabić, Speaker of the National Assembly of Serbia, that the EU enlargement “is not a process based on merits, but on political will”. According to Mirel, it is both “a merit-based and a political process”.
In her speech at the annual summit “EU-Western Balkans”, organised today by the “Friends of Europe” in Brussels, Brnabić stressed that she was “a little bit confused about the EU accession process”.
“Is it based on meritocracy or is it purely political will? You know, it is absolutely not a merit-based process. The phrase that it is merit-based has almost become an insult to most of us in the Western Balkans because it has nothing to do with setting goals. And when you achieve the goals in terms of implementing reforms, the clusters will not magically open”, she noted.
Commenting on Brnabić’s claims, Pierre Mirel stressed that “Mrs. Speaker Brnabić should not be confused”.
“The answer for Mrs Speaker is in the so-called “new approach”, which was set in 2011 by the European Commission… It implies that the overall accession process, i.e. the opening of the negotiating chapters (clusters), cannot move forward unless you move on in Chapters 23 and 24 – the “fundamentals”… So, Mrs Speaker has the answer, she should not be confused”, Mirel remarked.
Elaborating on the political dimension of the EU enlargement process, Mirel said that the candidate countries, which today completely align with the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU, “should participate in the Foreign Affairs Council, without voting right”.
According to him, it “would be a very important gesture by the EU, also for the population of these countries”.
