The challenge was met by the Bulgarian presidency of the Council of the EU with the Western Balkans as its priority (see EUROPE 11933, 11937). On Friday 29 June, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that Bulgaria’s greatest success during its six months of presidency was the Sofia summit on the Balkans on 17 May (see EUROPE 12022) and the breakthroughs made regarding the region’s European future.
Addressing the press, and in the presence of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boïko Borissov, Tusk explained: “It is clear when it comes to politics that the main achievement is, of course, the Sofia summit and the political outcome of the summit. It was an idea and an initiative from Boïko Borissov”. He acknowledged that he had been sceptical when Borissov first floated the idea of such a summit. “In Sofia and thanks to Boïko Borissov we achieved a very specific political breakthrough also when it comes to the EU future of the region”, the European Council president added, going on to describe the summit as “a historic moment” in terms of the EU’s relations with the Western Balkans.
Jean-Claude Juncker spoke along the same lines. “One big performance of Bulgaria is the fact that they have changed the atmosphere in the Western Balkans, because the EU perspective was far more credible during Boïko leadership”, he confided. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)