Not long ago, in a WPR Briefing, Phil Cain discussed the dangerous precedent set by Slovenia’s veto of Croatia’s EU accession negotiations over an unresolved border dispute between the two nations. The MEP responsible for Croatia’s accession dossier, Austrian Socialist MEP Hannes Swoboda, has just announced that if the dispute isn’t settled within the next few weeks, it won’t be possible to open the remaining accession chapters needed to conclude negotiations in 2009, as planned. Possibility of breaking the deadline in that timespan, according to Swoboda?
“Seventy to 80 percent not possible.”
That’s Eurospeak for “a longshot.”