EU enlargement is key to peace in Balkans: Slovenia

(LJUBLJANA) - The European Union must press ahead with its enlargement to the south-east if there is to be long-lasting peace and stability in the Balkans, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor said.

"We should not neglect this region and believe that everything is OK simply because it is peaceful there at the moment," Pahor told AFP in an interview.

"The peace could easily be disturbed without fresh input" from the EU, he said ahead of a two-day visit to France, where he was scheduled to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"I'll tell him (Sarkozy) that the current peace in the region could be under threat if no progress is made in solving delicate domestic issues, say in the case of Bosnia, or bilateral issues, as in the case between Serbia and Kosovo, or Macedonia and Greece," Pahor said.

Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav state to have joined so far both the EU and the single-currency eurozone and has been a steadfast campaigner for the further enlargement of the 27-nation bloc to the south-east.

Unlike France and Germany, Slovenia also believes that Turkey should one day be able to become a fully fledged member of the bloc, Pahor said.

"Strategically, in the long term, it can only be in the EU's interest to have a country such as Turkey as a member, rather than fearing it," said Pahor, who met Turkish President Abdullah Gul during a two-day visit to Istanbul last week.

The 47-year-old politician and head of Slovenia's centre-left Social Democrat party insisted, however, that such differences would not sour relations with France and Germany.

"France understands ... all the reforms my government is undertaking," he said. "Our aim is to join France and Germany in leading the EU out of crisis."

Slovenia's export-orientated economy was dealt a blow by the global crisis, with gross domestic product contracting by 8.1 percent in 2009, even if it returned to modest growth of 1.1 percent last year.

"I have no illusions: we are in the middle of a very tough period, but I believe that, from a strategic point of view, we are overcoming (the crisis) in the right way," Pahor said.

Last year, Pahor froze public sector wages, proposed a shake-up of the labour market and pushed through a reform of the pension system to meet the challenges of an ageing population.

But the plans have been held up by unions, who are demanding a referendum on the pension reform before it can become law.

Pahor warned that any delay in the reform could have a serious effect on the pace of economic recovery.

Slovenia's sovereign debt rating "would certainly fall, making borrowing more expensive and that would have macroeconomic implications", he said.

"Recovery would be jeopardised and that could have a detrimental effect on the social situation in Slovenia," he added.

Pahor and his four-party coalition government, which came to power in 2008, have prescribed a wide range of belt-tightening and austerity measures which have seen their popularity slump to an all-time low.

In fact, with barely a year to go before the next election, support is currently at just 20 percent, according to a poll published by daily Dnevnik in February.

"People may think our measures are excessive. But what is the alternative, if we want to recover?" Pahor asks.

He refuses to make any predictions about his chances in the 2012 election.

Pahor expressed satisfaction with the former Yugoslav republic's achievements 20 years after becoming a sovereign state.

"I think we can be satisfied. But if you ask me whether we can relax or whether we should be more ambitious, well I'd say, of course, that we need to be more ambitious," Pahor said.