European Union
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
============================================================

Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

As a matter of fact, ministers from a number of member states raised that issue at a number of the meetings we have had recently. What happened in terms of that funeral was simply not appropriate for somebody who had been jailed for genocide. It was totally and utterly inappropriate. We know, though, that in Serbia there is a part of the population that very much wants to have strong ties with the EU. The current Acting President, Ms Ana Brnabić, was Prime Minister when I was previously Minister of State for European affairs and she seemed to be a very pro-European person. She led Serbia's negotiating teams at some of the intergovernmental conferences we had. We did attempt, as holders of the Presidency, to bring some progress to Serbia's candidacy before that. It was very challenging. Many member states had issues, so that is off the agenda for now, I would say. Serbia is a candidate country, however, and the most important part of being a candidate country is that it has a pro-European direction and implements the reforms it needs to implement. That includes a commitment to democracy and the rule of law if it ever wants to become a member state of the EU or if it has that European vision we all cherish.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01