Marta Kos

I mean, I'm looking for answers because it's shocking to me how out of step they are.

There are a couple of things.

I mean, to give credit where credit is due, Marta Kost, the enlargement commissioner, was the only one who called it straight and said, I won't be going because of this.

This is out of step with our values, which is right answer.

So gold star for that one.

The court has yet to deliver a ruling.

European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos has confirmed the European Union's commitment to Georgia's European future.

Acknowledging growing uncertainty among Georgians, she said Brussels continued to support the country's European aspirations.

Kos previously described Georgia as a EU candidate country only on paper, contrasting its position with Ukraine and Moldova.

These are expected to be the hardest given the sensitivities of farmers in France and Poland ahead of elections in both countries next year.

Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos still hopes to open all six by the end of the year.

EU leaders also meet in Brussels on October fifteenth and sixteenth.

President Zelensky will attend on fifteenth of October if the new clusters are opened beforehand.

It's also likely that they want to clear out the Bab al-Mandib Strait before any kind of a peace agreement can be made so they can get back to shipping oil towards China.

And next, on the 6th of October, the enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, presented proposals to speed up EU enlargement.

They included qualified majority voting on opening negotiation clusters, early access to the EU markets and benefits for candidates, and a 15-year probation period during which new members could have funding cut or voting rights restricted.

Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine lead the queue, with Montenegro eyed for 2028, and early benefits would be tied to strategic alignment, a condition aimed squarely at Russian-leaning governments such as Serbia.

We'll get to that a little bit later.

But in the lead-up to the funeral, uh, y- European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, who herself is from Slovenia, another former Yugoslav country, she was planning on visiting Serbia for some meetings, and when the news came out of the funeral, or rather how much the government showed, "We still stand behind what Mladić did," we, uh...

How the s- the religious authorities were saying similar things, she canceled her visit.

She said, quote, "The glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU is built." End quote.

Ukraine may soon move forward in its EU accession talks.

European Commissioner Marta Kos said the EU could open two more negotiating clusters for Ukraine and Moldova next week if the Ukrainian parliament passes the required education law on national minorities.

France is also preparing a new step in military cooperation.

Zelensky said Ukrainian pilots will soon begin training on French Rafale fighter jets.

Yeah, and this is one of the countries that Ursula von der Leyen is not visiting, ostensibly because it's got an election, but actually we should remember that there was this, uh ...

We've spoken about it on another podcast, this funeral for a convicted war criminal, Mladić, and in response to that, the EU's Enlargement Commissioner, Marta Kos, actually announced that she would be canceling a visit to Serbia.

And there's been a cacophony of voices speaking out and saying this is absolutely unacceptable and that Serbia is moving further away from the EU path.

And indeed, there have been significant instances of influence operations which are assumed to be run by Russia in Serbia.

So, The government of Serbia is saying, oh, no, it wasn't really a state funeral, but it had all the trappings of a state funeral.

And again, the European Commissioner Marta Kos came out and she cancelled the meeting in Serbia.

She said, we cannot go to a country who celebrates people who have been prosecuted and indicted and been in jail for genocide and pretend they want to join the European Union.

You know, she said that glorification of war criminals is fundamentally incompatible with the European Union.