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"Welcome to The Club, Mr Tadić."

"Thank you Mr. President."
Last-minute objections by Romania no obstacle to final decision by EU leaders later this week.

National ministers for foreign or European affairs today (28 February) recommended granting Serbia the status of a candidate for EU membership.

The decision will have to be approved by EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on 1-2 March, a step that is seen as a formality despite reservations from Romania.

Nicolai Wammen, the EU affairs minister of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, said: "I'm pleased we've been able to recommend candidate status for Serbia."

"We look forward to confirmation at the European Council," he said. "Serbia is now on its way back into our European family."

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said after a meeting with Boris Tadić, Serbia's president: "Serbia deserves the candidate status. That has been for some time the opinion of the European Commission."

Barroso and Tadić met this afternoon before the ministers had concluded their meeting.

Wammen said it was "no secret" that negotiations on Serbia's status had been "difficult and tough". Romania had expressed concern about the treatment of ethnic Romanians in Serbia, and the final statement of today's General Affairs Council contains an annex by the European Commission in which it commits itself to monitoring the implementation of minority rights in Serbia.

Wammen said that member states had agreed unanimously to recommend granting Serbia candidate status because Serbia had lived up to conditions agreed by EU leaders in December, when a decision on its application was postponed. "Over the past months and years Serbia has delivered on reforms and has shown good results in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue," he said, referring to EU-brokered talks with Kosovo.

The talks resulted in a compromise agreement last Friday (24 February) on how Kosovo can be presented in diplomatic gatherings, paving the way for today's decision on candidate status for Serbia.