The EU needs to accept new members from the Western Balkans to avoid the risk of a new war there, the EU’s chief executive said on Tuesday, setting up a possible clash with France and Germany which have resisted further enlargement, Reuters reported.

The European Commission is pushing for the EU to expand into a region which is still scarred by ethnic wars fought in the 1990s and dogged by a reputation for lawlessness.

“If we do not open up to countries in that highly complicated and tragic region, and if we do not open up a European perspective to them, we will see war returning to that area as we saw in the 1990s,” Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker told the European Parliament.

“I do not want to see war returning to the Balkans and so we need to open up to them,” he said.