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Von der Leyen gathers the leaders of the Western Balkans/ In Thursday's meeting, also Prime Minister Rama

2024-09-15 12:30:00, Aktualitet CNA

Von der Leyen gathers the leaders of the Western Balkans/ In Thursday's

Ursula von der Leyen and Edi Rama

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has been elected at the head of this institution for a new five-year term, will gather the leaders of the Western Balkan countries at a working lunch in Brussels on September 19.

Prime Minister Rama will also be present at the meeting, who is expected to request holding the Second Intergovernmental Conference in October to be followed by another one by the end of this year.

With this meeting, she wants to prove that even in the new mandate, she will pay special attention to this region and the EU enlargement process in general.

However, the main purpose of this meeting is to discuss the "reform and growth agendas", which almost all the countries of the Western Balkan region have submitted to the European Commission, as a precondition to receive the first payments from the Growth Plan for the Balkans Western, approved by the EU in May of this year.

Von der Leyen gathers the leaders of the Western Balkans/ In Thursday's

Von der Leyen has been personally engaged in the promotion of this plan, while it has also been supported by the European Parliament and member countries in the EU Council.

Von der Leyen's meeting with the leaders of the Western Balkan countries will be a good opportunity to see where these countries have reached with their preparations to realize the goals of this plan.

Each country had to prepare a reform agenda, based on the preliminary recommendations of the EU bodies.

Five countries in the region have already done this, while Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only one, which, for internal political reasons, has not yet done so.

Expectations in the EU were that, in mid-September, the European Commission would approve these agendas of the countries of the region. It was expected that this would happen even before the September 19 meeting, but the process has been postponed to October.

As an unofficial reason, the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet submitted its plan is mentioned. And, considering that local elections will soon take place in this country, he is not expected to do this until October.

The goal is to help economic growth and, in this way, accelerate the European integration process of this region.

Beneficiaries of these funds are all the countries of the region: Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

The plan also aims to promote regional cooperation and the development of the common market in the region, which would gradually be integrated into the common market of the European Union.

This plan, according to EU officials, is in no way intended to create an alternative to EU enlargement, but to make the membership of these countries in the EU easier./ CNA





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