Rama: Balkans Open, Because We Cannot Wait for EU

In an online address to a political panel at the Open Balkans conference in Serbia's Parliament, Rama said the region's economies have long received this initiative and that it will enable a faster economic development of all three through open borders for goods, services, people and capital.

I would say that we are now in the phase of the initiative when we start doing some specific things, in recent sessions we have made significant steps that will be concrete in December at the Tirana summit by signing an agreement and which means working more easily. The conditions for companies and people have problems because of borders and bureaucracy”, Rama said.

He noted that the initiators of the “Balkan Open” should not use “use time to convince other economies in the region to join it and convince them how valuable it is.

For us it's clear, so we're part of this initiative. I am proud that the steps we are taking are such that they actually have a great impact on the citizens, on the people they produce, which export”, Rama said.

He explained that the three countries decided to launch this initiative, as he added, have seen through the Berlin process what steps they had taken.

“However, the Western Balkans somewhat” has stalled “in that initiative and that process has become a kind of endless history. We have noted that all these gatherings and statements made under the Berlin Process, which in practice none of this happens in life”, Rama said.

The biggest problem, he points out, is that not all Western Balkan countries could find a consensus and that “everything fits all of it”.

“We can't wait for the EU either, they can promise something, so they don't fulfill, then they promise again, then they don't meet, it's up to them... We can't wait anymore, you have to move forward”, Rama said.

He stressed that this initiative is not the creation of a new Yugoslavia or a comforting price for EU membership, but that it meets European integration, which means that members of the “Balkan Open” will be more willing when the time for EU membership comes and will be able to join the EU as a whole. / KP/