It is important that each country should be required to meet the same preconditions to join the European Union, the Hungarian foreign minister said in Tirana on Friday, adding that “there must be no fast lanes” while the entry criteria should be “clear and fair”.
Following talks with Albanian Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka, Péter Szijjártó said the two parties had signed an EU integration cooperation agreement, under which Hungary would send two experts to Albania in a bid to help speed up that country’s “unacceptably slow” integration. Szijjártó said it was unacceptable that thirteen years had passed between Albania’s submitting its request to join the EU and the start of accession talks in 2022. “It is still not clear if actual talks about chapters in the integration process could start before the end of this year,” he said, adding that starting meaningful talks was the Hungarian government’s “clear expectation towards Brussels”.
Concerning proposals that Ukraine should be co-opted as an EU member in an expedited procedure, Szijjártó called it “extremely important” that “there should be no shortcuts, or fast lanes, but everybody should meet the same fair conditions within the same timeframe and the same expectations for all candidates”. “Let us make it clear that a real achievement is required, and a clear set of criteria are needed that everybody must meet … such as in the area of the protection of ethnic minorities, where Ukraine still has a lot to do,” he said.
Szijjártó and his host also signed a water management cooperation agreement. Under the accord, Budapest’s waterworks will elaborate a management system for its counterpart in Tirana, while Hungary’s GEMTECH company will build a solar panel park in Albania worth 5 billion forints (EUR 13.36m), to which the Hungarian government will contribute 2.5 billion forints in a grant, the minister said.
Szijjártó highlighted the Western Balkans as an important market in focus under Hungary’s foreign economic strategy, where Hungarian investors “have been hugely successful”. Albania is an “excellent example” with Hungary’s telco 4iG, retail bank OTP and airline WizzAir being market leaders “in three extremely important sectors”.
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1 Comment
That’s interesting – our Politicians are usually brash, propagating access to countries that don’t even come close, so they’re starting to “get it”, albeit on a pick and choose basis.
As I’ve posted before, any country should meet the Copenhagen criteria:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=LEGISSUM:accession_criteria_copenhague
They are:
1. stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
2. a functioning market economy and the ability to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the EU;
3. the ability to take on the obligations of membership, including the capacity to effectively implement the rules, standards and policies that make up the body of EU law (the ‘ acquis ’), and
4. adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
I’d argue any Member should at all times continue to meet these criteria – and that’s where we’re currently running into all kinds of trouble with our fellow Members, who are holding us to account (and thus withholding EU funds).