Serbia step nearer becoming EU member

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted congratulations to Serbia after a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers.

Nicolai Wammen, minister of European affairs for Denmark, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said Serbia had fulfilled the conditions demanded by the bloc.

The final decision on the coveted status will be made at a summit this week of EU leaders.

Serbia had been expected to be made a formal candidate in December, after it captured two top war crimes suspects.

But ministers delayed, saying they wanted to see more progress in talks between Serbia and Kosovo.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro have delayed a decision on whether to give their bailout funds more firepower until later in March, European officials said.

Eurozone leaders were expected to meet on Friday afternoon to decide whether the currency union’s bailout funds would be allowed to give more than 500 billion euro (£424bn) in loans. The decision was highly anticipated because there are mounting concerns that the eurozone’s safety nets – which have already bailed out Greece, Ireland and Portugal – are too weak to support large struggling countries such as Italy or Spain.

The European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – the International Monetary Fund and several euro countries want the new, permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, to run in parallel with its predecessor, the European Financial Stability Facility. Under current plans, the EFSF would stop operating when the ESM comes into force in July and all its commitments to Greece, Ireland and Portugal would have to be subtracted from the ESM’s 500 billion euro capacity. That would allow the ESM to give out only around 320 billion euro (£271bn) in loans.