The joint market like to have the model of a new Yugoslavia

According to them, the markets of the countries of the region are small and thus cannot be attractive to international investors, so market expansion is estimated to benefit all countries in this part of Europe.

Last week, leaders of Western Balkan countries and those of the European Union have discussed the issue of the common market and signed in Trieste, Italy's Community Transport Treaty.

The European Union says the goal of these Balkan summits is to strengthen regional co-operation in order to accelerate the integration of these countries into the EU.

The executive director at the American Economic Ode in Pristina, Arian Zeka, told Radio Free Europe that after the agreements reached, the Government of Kosovo should be more engaged in working groups at the technical level. He says the elimination of all barriers that producers have faced even from Kosovo during their efforts to export to the member states of the Central European Free Trade Agreement, known in the CEFTA February February.

“Eliminating some of the barriers including state borders that have often brought about various problems of political nature, it could make Western Balkan states look like a common economic space and therefore promote foreign investment directly through these states”, Zeka says.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the German Economic Ode Board in Kosovo, Fadil Hoxha, told Radio Free Europe, that establishing the common market in the Western Balkans would be functional if policy does not intervene in this context.

“However, if Serbia claims to have the primat of the Western Balkans, if it is a political issue, it would not present interest in us”.

If Serbia or the so-called Yugoslavia does not dominate the new Yugoslavia, I consider this project will be welcome for all Kosovo businesses”, Hoxha says.

But Hoxha insists that the common market, which is being insisted on, could function without free movement. Citizens and businesses from Kosovo in this case have many barriers when free movement is in question, as well as lack of visa liberalisation.

Even top Kosovo state officials themselves have already expressed enough reservations and objections regarding the idea of a regional economic union of the Western Balkans.

Outgoing Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa in an interview for Radio Free Europe has said Pristina has argued that this cannot be done, because they would return an earlier composition that has been in this part of the Balkans.

In other circumstances, Arrian Zeka says no treaty will have its value unless all states submit to the same rules of the game.

“Actually, if Kosovo fails to eliminate the political barriers that Kosovo producers often face, then no idea of creating economic integration spaces, whether they are common markets or treaties of more specific natures, such as the Treaty on Transport, cannot function, should a state be dealt with in a more inferior way over other states”, Zeka says.

The idea for establishing a common market has been proposed by senior European Union officials at a meeting with leaders of the 6 Western Balkan countries that were held in Sarajevo in March, which is part of the Berlin process.

This market, they say, would also ease high unemployment in the region, where an estimated 800,000 new jobs would first be opened.