The European Commission feels that the Western Balkans should focus on reconciliation, the European Western Balkans portal said on Monday.

“Procedures for the establishment of RECOM (an inter-governmental regional commission to investigate war crimes and human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia) should be initiated as soon as possible, and the leaders of the region need to take steps to establish it, the European Commission said in its Strategy for the Western Balkans,” the portal said.

The EC has given a clear signal that reconciliation is high among the EU’s priorities for the region, and that it will particularly insist on a regional efforts in establishing the facts on past, it said and added that a regional approach is the only way to determine the facts about war victims, missing persons and detention sites since the authorities of the Yugoslav successor states are disputing the numbers because none of them have a complete record.

The European Western Balkans portal said that if RECOM is established by June 2020 it can start operating in 2022 and complete the job within three years with a mandate to collect information on human rights violations, war crimes and the fate of the missing, compile a list of civilian and military losses, detention sites and investigate the causes of the armed conflict and war crimes.

“The EU sees reconciliation in the Western Balkans as a priority because the lack of a consensus on the victims of the 1990s conflict leaves room for nationalist manipulations, which could jeopardize the security of the entire region,”it said.