Western Balkans need to integrate in EU, Sergei Stanishev says

At a Council of the Party of the European Socialists (PES) sitting, the Bulgarian Prime Minister and Socialist Party Chairman Sergei Stanishev said that the Western Balkans needed to integrate in EU. He also stressed that the process of EU enlargement carried an enormous potential. Bulgarian PM identified the relations with the Western Balkans as one of EU’s priorities. According to him, if those countries received no chance of EU integration, it was not unthinkable for ethnic or religious conflicts to be reawakened by local nationalist factions. Sergei Stanishev welcomed the PES’s initiative for a Black-Sea Union due to Black Sea’s strategic position in terms of security, energy projects and transport.

http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/News/0212B11.htm