Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission (EC), said in Brussels on Wednesday that the Western Balkan countries should have a European Union membership prospect, otherwise there was a high risk of returning to the 1990s, the FoNet news agency reported.

Speaking after talks with Slovenian President Borut Pahor, Juncker said the Western Balkans’ chances of joining the bloc had to be real and that he believed “it was the matter of war or peace.”

He referred to the 1991-1995 wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and the armed conflict in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

On the brighter side, Juncker spoke about the Three Seas Initiative’s meeting in Ljubljana in June which he said he strongly supported.

The Initiative aims at strengthening the trade, infrastructural, energy and political cooperation on the territories surrounded by the Adriatic, Baltic and Black seas.

The Initiative gathers 12 EU countries: Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia and Austria.