Ivan Vejvoda, the Director of the European Project at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM), said on Tuesday he believed the Western Balkans countries would become the European Union member states and that the question was not whether but when that would happen, the Beta news agency reported.

Addressing the seminar organised by the Madrid Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies (FEAS) with "Balkans Countries – Future EU members?" as a topic, Vejvoda said that it was "an issue of the EU project's credibility, since when you look at the map there is a gap in the European construction."

He said that problems the EU was facing did not make it easy for those countries to advance, but added it was important for the bloc to maintain its promise.

"Bearing in mind the outside challenges like those coming from Russia, China, the Gulf countries and Turkey, it is essential that the EU remains committed to what it has said ten years ago – that the Western Balkans countries will join the Union one day," Vejvoda was quoted as saying by the FEAS website.