Croatia should be able to conclude talks in 2009 to become the next country to join the European Union, the European Commission said on Thursday, as it sought to encourage integration of the troubled Balkans region.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after talks with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader that the EU executive would give Zagreb an indicative timetable later this year for the steps required to close the accession talks.

"I have every confidence that Croatia will be able to meet the conditions...It should be possible to conclude the technical negotiations next year, preferably by the end of the mandate of the Commission (in November 2009)," he told a joint news conference.

Barroso said the target date assumed Croatia would meet all the EU's benchmarks by June this year, which include a reform of the judiciary and a painful restructuring of its state-assisted shipyards.

Allowing time for ratification by the 27 member states, that would mean Croatia would join the EU in late 2010 or 2011.

The Commission's explicit pledge of a target date was a choreographed political reward for Sanader after he took the political risk of pushing through a divided parliament the suspension of a protected ecological and fisheries zone.

The EU executive was particularly keen to overcome the hurdle with Croatia as it struggles to persuade other Western Balkans countries, especially Serbia and Bosnia, to choose the path of European integration over nationalist policies.

Croatia's parliament voted early on Thursday to allow EU fishermen to enter the protected no-fishing zone reaching into the middle of the Adriatic Sea it imposed on January 1.

Sanader said the parliament made the right decision. "One of the most important national interests is to join the European Union -- this great process of unifying Europe," he said.

SUCCESS STORY

"I am very confident that Croatia will be the 28th member of the European Union," Sanader said. "We are ready to do this work, to master the job in 2008, in order to be able to conclude the negotiation process by autumn next year.

"We want Croatia to be a success story, also a model country for other countries in the region."

Slovenia, the only former Yugoslav republic to have joined the EU so far, and which holds the bloc's rotating presidency, had threatened to start blocking Croatia's accession talks if the exclusion zone applied to the Slovenian and Italian fleets.

Barroso said that as well as meeting benchmarks by June, Croatia would have to comply with all its legal obligations under an already signed Stabilisation and Association Agreement that charts reforms necessary for EU entry.

"Furthermore, Croatia urgently needs to improve its management of European Union financial assistance," he said.

It also needed to suspend completely the ecological and fisheries protection zone with respect to EU vessels. "I consider this now done," he said.

Barroso said the Commission was fully in favour of sustainable management of fisheries and was ready to work on proposals for a fisheries protection area in the Adriatic.