European Union governments recommended today that Serbia become a candidate to join the bloc, but delayed a final decision until a summit of EU leaders this week due to reservations from Romania.
Bucharest unexpectedly refused to sign an agreement on granting Serbia the coveted status of candidate to join the 27-country bloc, in a row over minority rights in the former Yugoslav state, EU diplomats said.
But other EU capitals insisted Serbia should be rewarded for years of democratic reforms, the capture of war crimes fugitives and efforts to mend fraught relations with Kosovo, a former province that declared independence in 2008.
In a compromise, foreign and EU affairs ministers meeting in Brussels left it to their heads of state and government to make a formal decision when they meet on Thursday and Friday.
Danish Europe minister Nicolai Wammen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said Serbia had met all the requirements to be considered an official candidate for membership.
"Therefore we decided to recommend to grant Serbia candidate status and we look forward to confirmation at the European Council later this week," he told a news conference.
Winning EU candidate status is a largely symbolic step toward the start of accession negotiations, which often require years as applicants seek to harmonise their laws with EU rules and meet other requirements.
But for Serbs, candidacy will mark a major step towards overcoming the legacy of Balkan wars, which had stymied economic growth and political reforms and kept the country lagging behind many of its ex-communist peers.
Slovenia, another former Yugoslav state, is an EU member that has adopted the euro.
Croatia, a former wartime foe, is scheduled to join in 2013, while Macedonia is a membership candidate.
Diplomats said the Romanian delegation had expressed concerns over the rights of a small group of ethnic Romanians in Serbia.
There are about 30,000 ethnic Romanians living in Serbia. Some members of the 40,000-strong ethnic Vlach community also consider themselves Romanian, while other Vlachs think of themselves as Serbian.
Romanian president Traian Basescu has urged Serbia to grant ethnic Romanians living on its territory the right to education in the Romanian language and access to services in Romanian Orthodox churches.
"We ask (Serbian authorities) to grant them the right to tuition in Romanian, to have an Orthodox church, to have a newspaper in their language, to have the right to tune into Romanian television or have a broadcast in Romanian," Mr Basescu told a gathering of ethnic Romanians last year after meeting Serbian president Boris Tadic.
Belgrade appeared to have been taken unawares by the Romanian move and had no immediate reaction.
However, Bor, a regional TV channel that broadcasts in eastern Serbia, home to most of the country's Vlach community, said it would start to complement its programming with subtitles in an approved Vlach language.
It said Serbia's ministry of culture was funding the innovation.
Serbia failed to win coveted EU candidate status last December due to opposition from several EU governments worried about tensions in the north of Kosovo.
But in recent days Belgrade appeared to win the backing of most EU states, including ones that had opposed its candidacy last year, such as Germany.
A key breakthrough came last week, with an agreement spelling out how Kosovo should be represented in regional meetings and setting up rules on managing a common border.
Reuters