EU says Croatia can conclude entry talks in 2009

By David Brunnstrom

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Croatia should be able to conclude talks in 2009 to become the next country to join the European Union, the European Commission said on Thursday, as it sought to encourage integration of the troubled Balkans region.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after talks with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader that the EU executive would give Zagreb an indicative timetable later this year for the steps required to close the accession talks.

"I have every confidence that Croatia will be able to meet the conditions...It should be possible to conclude the technical negotiations next year, preferably by the end of the mandate of the Commission (in November 2009)," he told a joint news conference.

Barroso said the target date assumed Croatia would meet all the EU's benchmarks by June this year, which include a reform of the judiciary and a painful restructuring of its state-assisted shipyards.

Allowing time for ratification by the 27 member states, that would mean Croatia would join the EU in late 2010 or 2011.

The Commission's explicit pledge of a target date was a choreographed political reward for Sanader after he took the political risk of pushing through a divided parliament the suspension of a protected ecological and fisheries zone.

The EU executive was particularly keen to overcome the hurdle with Croatia as it struggles to persuade other Western Balkans countries, especially Serbia and Bosnia, to choose the path of European integration over nationalist policies.

Croatia's parliament voted early on Thursday to allow EU fishermen to enter the protected no-fishing zone reaching into the middle of the Adriatic Sea it imposed on January 1.