A date for the formal launch of negotiations should be determined in October, according to this.
By then, a new report by EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule on Serbia's progress should be complete, the newspaper said.
The article added that leaders of EU member states are "closest to this scenario."
The decision of the Council on June 28 will also likely to contain a
clause that the date of the official start of negotiations can be
postponed, if it was estimated that the implementation of the agreement
between Belgrade and Priština was not going at an expected pace.
In this way different positions within the EU would be reconciled,
Serbia would be recognized for the enormous progress in the
normalization of relations with the Kosovo Albanians, but Germany would
also be satisfied, a state that has the toughest and decisive stance
when it comes to Serbia's EU integration, writes the newspaper.
According to the article, the faction of the ruling German coalition
CDU-CSU led by Andreas Schockenhoff is willing to accept the
recommendation of their government to grant Serbia the start of
negotiations, but will insist that Chancellor Angela Merkel at the
European Council conditions the exact date with the implementations of
the Brussels agreement.
Serbian state leaders, meanwhile,
expect that the position of the European Council in June to be "clear
and unambiguous." Prime Minister Ivica Dačić has said that he does not
expect "conditional dates", while one of his deputies, Suzana Grubješić
told the daily that "a positive approach, without additional
conditioning, was necessary".
Director of the Government Office
for EU Integration Milan Pajević has confirmed that the European
Council will most likely instead of an exact date order the Commission
to take the necessary steps to start negotiations.
"In fact, a
date and the green light to start technical preparations for
negotiations are the same thing. In the case of a positive scenario, the
Commission would determine the exact guidance and begin the so-called
screening of our compliance with European regulations," says Pajević.
EU's representative in Belgrade Vincent Deger has been quoted as saying
that accession talks cannot begin a day after the positive decision of
the European Council, but that the negotiating framework must be
prepared and key elements and conditions identified – "which certainly
takes a couple months."
(Novosti/Frontal)
