The European Union (EU) on Monday signed an agreement with
Montenegro, formally putting the former Yugoslav republic on the
way toward the bloc's membership.
The Stabilization and Association agreement (SAA), signed on the
sidelines of a meeting of General Affairs and External Relations
Council, has to be individually ratified by the 27 EU member
states.
"This a great day for Montenegro and its citizens," said
Montenegro's Prime Minister Zeljko Sturanovic, who signed the deal
with EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn along with Portuguese
Foreign Minister Luis Amado, whose country currently holds the
rotating EU presidency.
"We hope ... in the first half of 2008 we can launch an official
application for membership," Sturanovic told reporters after the
signing ceremony.
Under the agreement, Montenegrin products can get free access to
the EU market, while the country will gradually open its market
over five years to European products.
Amado described the signing as "a very important step forward"
in stabilizing the Western Balkans.
Rehn noted that only proper implementation of the SAA will lead
Montenegro "to EU candidate status one day."
An interim economic agreement will take effect on January 1,
2008, as the procedure could possibly last up to two years.
Montenegro has gone a bumping way toward the signing of the
accord. Negotiations on the deal began in 2005, when Montenegro
still belonged to a federation with Serbia.
The talks were suspended in May 2006 because of Belgrade's
non-cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia and resumed in June 2006 as the country pulled
out of the federation.
Just before the signing, Bulgaria threatened to block the
agreement over how to spell the word "euro" as it insisted that in
the Bulgarian version of the SAA the word should be written in the
cyrillic alphabet as "evro." Bulgaria finally agreed in principle
to enable the EU sign the accord with Montenegro by postponing the
dispute.
(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2007)
