ZAGREB, April 17, 2018 - In a rather dramatic warning to the European Parliament on Tuesday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that the European Union had to offer Southeast European countries a prospect of EU membership so as to avert a repetition of conflicts like those that occurred in the 1990s.
If we do not open up to countries in that extremely complex and tragic region, if we do not offer them European prospects, we will again have the kind of war that happened there in the 1990s, Juncker told members of the European Parliament after they were addressed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
I do not want a war in the Balkans again and therefore we have to open up to those countries, said Juncker.
He welcomed Macron's speech but warned that Europe was not just France and Germany and that it also needed the contribution of other countries.
The EC is expected to publish progress reports for EU candidate countries and potential member countries later in the day.
