Accession of Serbia to the European Union

Serbian EU accession bid

Status

Negotiating

Opened chapters

Closed chapters

Website

Statistics

	EU average	Serbia
PPP GDP ($M)	552,780	106,580
PPP per capita ($)	40,600	13,700
Area (km²)	165,048	88,361
Population	18,583,598	7,186,862

The accession of Serbia to the European Union is the process of the Republic of Serbia being admitted into the framework of the European Union as a member state.

On 7 November 2007, Serbia initialed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the European Union. This was a milestone in Serbia's accession negotiations and was executed following the advice of chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who advised the EU that the country was complying adequately with the tribunal but Ratko Mladić must be in The Hague prior to any official signing being able to take place. Mladić was subsequently arrested on 26 May 2011, and has since been extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to stand trial. On 20 July 2011, Goran Hadžić became the last indicted fugitive to be arrested. After setbacks in the political field, on 7 December 2009 the EU unfroze the trade agreement with Serbia and the Schengen countries dropped the visa requirement for Serbian citizens on 19 December 2009.

Serbia officially applied for European Union membership on 22 December 2009, and the European Commission recommended making it an official candidate on 12 October 2011. After the Council's recommendation of 28 February 2012, Serbia received full candidate status on 1 March. On 28 June 2013 the European Council endorsed the Council of Ministers conclusions and recommendations to open accession negotiations with Serbia. In December 2013 the Council of the European Union approved opening negotiations on Serbia's accession in January 2014, and the first Intergovernmental Conference was held on 21 January at the European Council in Brussels.

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Wikipedia