Brussels, 02/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 1 June, the High Representative of the EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, announced that she was counting on the Slovakian Presidency of the EU of 1 July to 31 December 2016 to help the countries of the Western Balkans to make progress towards EU integration.
“I know that I can count on the Slovakian Presidency to ensure that every country of the Western Balkans (Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) makes progress on their road to EU integration”, Mogherini said in a speech before the Slovakian ambassadors in Bratislava. “We will work together to make sure that each one makes progress in the six months of the Presidency”, she added, stressing that the Western Balkans were a “part of the world in which only the EU can make a real difference and where this is welcomed and requested”.
“There is no more powerful tool than European integration, the road to integration, to ensure that there is no temptation to return to situations of conflict, or any temptation to move towards a certain form of radicalisation in the region”, said the High Representative. “A lot of things are moving in the region, and we need to make sure that they move in the right direction”, she added.
Enlargement is one of the priorities of the Slovakian Presidency, as the Slovakian foreign minister, Miroslav Lajcak, announced in Brussels earlier that day.
Serbia and Montenegro have opened chapters of negotiations, Albania is waiting to start accession negotiations, Kosovo has just seen its stabilisation and association agreement enter into force and Bosnia has applied to be an accession candidate. Lastly, FYROM, a candidate country, is in serious political crisis.
In Bratislava, Mogherini also said that the six months of the Slovakian Presidency would be marked, in terms of foreign policy, by the migration crisis, Libya, the peace process in the Middle East, Syria, but also by the countries of the East. “The next six months are months in which we will need to reflect on the implementation of the Minsk agreements (in Ukraine), and on the ongoing reforms in the countries of the Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine)”, she told the ambassadors. Mogherini also took pains to reassure anybody who believes that the Eastern partnership is the poor relation. “Our intention is to focus on the South and the East equally”, she explained, adding the need to continue to focus on what is happening in Eastern Europe, in the countries of the Partnership. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)