On Thursday 1 March, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the summit between the EU and six countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) on 17 May would focus on migration and connectivity in particular.
"We will talk about accession and EU enlargement, but in my view this will not be the main subject. We will need to discuss the problems of migration, which concern us all. We will also need to pay more attention to the region's economic integration, so we will need to speak about the weak connectivity between the Balkans countries", he said, at the end of a meeting in Sofia with Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and the heads of state and government of the six Western Balkans countries.
Juncker underlined that it will be important to agree on the implementation of the 155 principles that govern the region's economic integration -principles that were agreed at the Trieste summit – (see EUROPE 11829) and on the financing of connectivity. Borissov said the Balkans countries want a motorway to be created linking all the capitals of the region. "We are counting on hybrid financing", he said, adding that the countries would work until the summit "to have the desired financing for the infrastructure".
At the end of his Balkans tour, Juncker also reiterated the importance the EU attaches to the six countries' European outlook (see EUROPE 11971). "The progress claimed by each is different (...) but I noted the same resolve everywhere, the same momentum to undertake reforms that will need to be undertaken the day EU accession becomes effective", he said. While there is therefore "enormous progress in the countries" in the region, which Juncker finds very impressive, he underlined "the need to fight credibly against organised crime, to fight against corruption, which is an evil eating away at our societies", and to settle territorial conflicts. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)