Starovic: Besides Montenegro, Serbia most ready for EU in terms of general preparedness

BELGRADE - Serbia's Minister for European Integration Nemanja Starovic said on Wednesday that, besides Montenegro, Serbia was the most prepared candidate country for full EU membership in terms of the general level of preparedness.

"That is not my assessment, but an assessment that can be read from the European Commission's annual reports on the progress of candidate countries," Starovic told a panel on Serbia's EU accession path, held at an Ambassadorial Conference hosted by the Serbian MFA in Belgrade.

He said that, under the Copenhagen criteria, there was a set of economic, legal and political benchmarks evaluated in the accession process and that, even though Serbia had challenges in the form of political benchmarks, it was right behind Montenegro - and ahead of North Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina - when it comes to the assessment of general preparedness.

"Already at this point we also see a kind of absurdity that exists and that we face - that the political benchmark based on which someone is defined as a so-called frontrunner leading the way in the EU integration process generally does not correspond to the general level of preparedness, assessed by the EC itself," Starovic said.

Such absurdity is not only the case with Serbia, but also with North Macedonia, which is close behind Serbia in terms of general preparedness but without any chapters open in the EU accession talks, while Albania, the next candidate behind North Macedonia, has opened all negotiation clusters, he said.