The forthcoming European Union Summit on Western Balkans in Sofia will be an incentive to linkage and enlargement, but the potential candidate countries still face a number of obstacles, a conference in Belgrade has been told on Monday.

The issue of enlargement was back on the EU’s agenda thanks to the Bulgarian presidency over the block, the country’s envoy to Belgrade Radko Vlajkov told the “EU Summit – Western Balkans: Where is the enlargement there?” conference.

He said that the text of the Sofia Declaration came as a result of a joint work and a compromise reached by all 28 EU member states and the Western Balkans’ countries.

Earlier, Spain, Cyprus and Romania, the EU member states that have not recognised Pristina’s independence, threatened to boycott the Summit if Kosovo was presented as a state.

Vlajkov said that apart from the enlargement, the process of connecting the Western Balkans’ countries to the EU would be one of the main topics at the Summit.

However, Vladimir Medjak, the vice president of the European Movement in Serbia said that the enlargement process was going on, but that it would probably be affected by the forthcoming elections in the EU, and that the story on the membership’s growth could not win that vote.

Medjak added that following the elections, the European Commission would have to clearly say whether there would be any enlargement.

The Balkan European Fund’s Programme Manager Igor Bandovic told the conference that the Western Balkans’ countries would go to Sofia without any substantial result.

He said that the Summit would be mostly focused on the bilateral problems in the region, including those between Serbia and Kosovo and Greece and Turkey.

Bandovic added that as far as a political message was concerned, it was a simple confirmation of what was said at the Summit in Thessaloniki in 2003, “and nothing more.”

He said that the support for the EU membership in the region was declining and was below 50 percent.

See at:http://rs.n1info.com/a387880/English/NEWS/Obstacles-to-EU-enlargement.html