EU Commissioner: Kosovo has met criteria for visa liberalisation

EU Commissioner for Economics and Digital Society Mariya Gabriel has held a meeting today with Deputy Prime Minister Enver Hoxhaj, Minister for Innovation Besim Beqaj and Economic Development Minister Valdrin Lu Luka.

After the meeting EU Commissioner for Economics and Digital Society Mariya Gabriel has said that Kosovo could be one of our key partners to use technology as an engine of the economy.

I would like to stress immediately how our co-operation is not just in beautiful words but it is a concrete thing. Now it's time to do it with very concrete dimensions. Landing the roaming for the region, we are working and we have clear ambitions about it. This people with such a new population and we have to invest in our citizens. I want to continue to encourage you to continue on this path of looking at innovation as an opportunity”, she said.

She has also talked about visa liberalisation for Kosovo.

Kosovo has worked hard to gain visa liberalisation and we can congratulate you on all of this. It is important to continue with dialogue with all states to make the decision soon. All criteria have been met, but it is not an easy process. You have this potential and it's important that you continue. Visa liberalisation is important to you and continue working within your country”, she said.

While Deputy Prime Minister Enver Hoxhaj has thanked the commissioner for all her contribution to Kosovo.

“As a European politician has been a supporter of Kosovo. Today it is in Pristina for another purpose, its goal is to promote technology innovation in Kosovo. Today we talked about how there can be good co-operation among ourselves about technology and innovation. We have also talked about lowering the roaming fee for countries in the region”, he said.

Hoxhaj also talked about yesterday's table that was initiated by the mayor Kadri Wessel's PDK.

The “is a determination of the Speaker of the Parliament to at any cost have a unity of how we should be represented in the dialogue. It's a little premature to get into the dialogue epilog, we know what our mutual recognition goals are, nothing less than that we don't accept”, he said.

As for visa liberalisation, Hoxhaj has said that at the end of the year it will be seen whether Europe is fair in relation to Kosovo.

The European Commission has been clear, the European Parliament has been clear we need to work on. I'm still not with him to raise a lot of tension in public, to work more with capitals. At the end of the year, it will be seen whether it has become fair with Kosovo or not, whether it is right with Kosovo or not. If there is a test measuring Europe's credibility in relation to Kosovo, it is visa liberalisation. It would be ironic that then in 2019 we believe that the EU will convince Serbia to recognise Kosovo if it does not have the internal capacity to make the decision on liberalisation”, he said.