On April 29th Serbia signed a stabilisation agreement with the European Union, usually the first step towards membership.
At its Riga summit last month, NATO invited Serbia to join its Partnership for Peace programme, the first step to membership.
They said that step, like membership in the World Trade Organization, would push China to be more responsible.
It gave it a stabilisation and association agreement (SAA), which is widely considered to be the first step towards membership.
At the same time Serbia is ready to sign a stabilisation and association agreement (SAA) with the EU, normally a first step towards membership.
Or would he gloat over his success in intimidating NATO into denying (for now) Ukraine and Georgia the next step towards membership?He adopted a pragmatic approach.
As Yushchenko's foreign minister, Poroshenko drafted an "association agreement" between Ukraine and the European Union, a potential first step toward membership.
In an earlier white paper on independence in 2009, the SNP described a sterling currency union as a first step towards membership of the euro.
LUXEMBOURG -- Serbia on Monday took an important step toward membership in the European Union as the bloc approved a cooperation deal with country, overriding earlier calls for more to be done to track down a Bosnian Serb fugitive accused of genocide.
LUXEMBOURG — Serbia took a significant step toward membership in the European Union on Monday, despite the union's suspicions that the country could do more to bring Europe's most-wanted war crimes suspect to justice.
In May 2006 the EU suspended talks with Serbia on a stabilisation and association agreement, widely seen as a first step towards membership, because of its failure to co-operate with the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.
