The Western Balkans region must remain among the European Union's top priorities, said European Parliament member Igor Soltes speaking at a conference discussing the future of EU and the Balkans.

Speaking as a keynote speaker at a conference ‘The Future of the EU and the Balkans’, organised under auspices of the International Institute for the Middle East and Balkans Studies (IFIMES), Soltes said the region must stay one of the priorities even after the elections in the EU.

“Regardless of the outcome of the elections in the EU, Europe will stay in the future but the question remains what is going to happen with it. EU is based on the freedom of speech, different opinions, democracy and we must maintain it,” said the MEP, representatives Slovenia in the European Parliament.

Europe must be capable of a renaissance it desperately needs, he added.

International community's top authority in Bosnia, High Representative Valentin Inzko, said that the Union cannot support double standards.

“There is no law prohibiting denial of the Holocaust, genocide and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and this is allowed there, while it is strongly forbidden in EU,” said Inzko, Austrian diplomat whom the international community appointed to oversee the implementation of the peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

He also recalled of certain discriminatory legislation in Bosnia, because of which the representatives of Jewish, Roma or some other ethnic group which is not constituent cannot run in the election for the Presidency.

Participants of the conference agreed it was necessary to secure a better future for the EU while intensively working on having Bosnia and other countries in the region join the bloc.