European Affairs

I agree absolutely with everything that the hon. Lady said. The Serbian Government have a clear foreign policy priority of integration into the European Union, but progress has been slow, and not just because of the difficulties with regard to Kosovo. The European Union Foreign Ministers have not activated the trade-related parts of Serbia's stabilisation and association agreement, following the arrest by Serbian authorities in July last year of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader. Serbian politicians of all kinds ask, "Why not?" They feel disappointed. The reason why progress has been slow is that the Dutch Government, in particular, have continued to oppose the unfreezing of the SAA for as long as Ratko Mladic, the former military commander of the Bosnian Serbs, remains at large. He is one of the two remaining indictees of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. There have been reports in the press recently that the issue of Mr. Mladic is resurfacing in debates and discussions, and it may be that steps will be taken to deal with that issue in the near future. Similar action was taken in Croatia a few years ago, and that accelerated the opening of the talks with the Croatian Government, but sadly there are now problems with Croatia's application for membership because of a territorial dispute to do with a bay between Slovenia and Croatia. That is causing difficulties, and is unresolved. The Czech presidency has failed in its efforts to make any progress on that issue; it will have to hand that on to Sweden, too. In other parts of the Balkans, the situation is more positive. Montenegro submitted an application in December. On 23 April, the Council of Ministers invited the European Commission to submit a formal opinion on that, as a first step towards possible enlargement. Similarly, Albania applied in April. Hopefully, the first assessment of that application will take place in the near future, in the autumn. So there is progress in some areas, and it is important that that progress continues. In a sense, if we are to resolve the problems that came out of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, the best solution is, as the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) says, to recreate a mechanism within the European Union through which there is trade and free movement of peoples, so that borders, and historical animosities, are overcome within the context of an enlarged European Union. The European Union is the way forward for many in Europe, but it is sad that debate in this country is dominated by an obsessive Eurosceptic media. It is absolutely the case that in the European elections, the Labour party had dreadful results, but the votes for the other main parties were also down significantly. There were different results in different European Union countries in the elections. The right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) gave the impression that the Eurosceptics had won everywhere in the European Parliament elections; that is not true. In some countries, the pro-European parties of the centre right had very good results. In France, an ecological, green party led by Dany Cohn-Bendit did extremely well. One cannot say that there is a generalised trend. In some countries, the percentage poll went up. In other countries, it fell drastically. The problem, I suspect, is that because there is not a general European media, in every country, the elections were reported and campaigned on in national terms.