The traditional high-profile panel on the Western Balkans at the Bled Strategic Forum (BSF) on Tuesday heard the participants note that it was high time for the countries of the region to join the EU as they were making serious progress, and that the EU should not forget about the region while dealing with internal issues.
The debate initially revolved around the appointment of Matthew Palmer of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs of the US Department of State as a special envoy to the Western Balkans. Palmer told the panel that what the US had done was “demonstrate responsiveness to the demands by partners and allies who have told us that we are not sufficiently engaged with the Western Balkans”.
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić first half-jokingly said he “expected nothing” from Palmer, but then added that the appointment was a sign that the US wanted to have a clearer presence in the region.
“It is certain that he will have a lot of work and his term should last until the relationship between Belgrade and Prishtina gets resolved,” Dačić said, adding that Serbia would try to be efficient and constructive in the talks with Kosovo. According to him, Serbia supports visa liberalisation for Kosovo and opening of EU accession negotiations for North Macedonia and Albania. He admitted that the leaders in the region should express more solidarity among each others.
From the perspective of a country that has made the biggest progress, Montenegrin Foreign Minister Srđan Darmanović said that “we are clearly frontrunners in the process” but that the region would be a “success story only when all of us get in there”. He hopes that North Macedonia and Albania are given a chance in October and the EU accession talks start as they have worked hard towards this goal. “We also expect from the EU to know what to do in the Western Balkans.”
Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov expressed the frustration for his country “losing almost a generation” while being frozen in the status of a candidate country, while making a huge progress and recently making a name deal with Greece. “We have reached a compromise, something very European, and something that is very rare in the region,” he said, adding that it was thus high time to start the accession talks instead of discussing historical disputes as the young people were leaving the country.
