Austria seeks recognition of Kosovo by whole EU

Austrian Minister for the European Union and Constitution Caroline Edtstadler has said she expects the entire European Union to recognise the independence of the Republic of Kosovo.

In a public letter, she has stressed that if Europe wants to turn its solidarity words with the Western Balkans into action, it should target five points, and one of them is Kosovo's “Nyozy of all 27 The EU as soon as possible and granting candidate status before the EU elections”.

Minister Edtstadler has criticised the EU for failing to act towards Western Balkan states in the last 20 years.

“Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Serbia were promised a future in the EU 20 years ago. What's happened since then? A little. Membership negotiations are open with four countries, but all four are in a virtual deadlock. The other two countries are still in the beginning: Bosnia and Herzegovina has candidate status since late 2022; Kosovo submitted its application for EU membership in December 2022 with no decision on how we want to proceed with it”, the Austrian minister says, among other things.

However, she says there is no doubt that many of the reasons for this situation lie with the six BP states themselves, citing the necessary reforms she says are still pending and fundamental problems remain unresolved.

Furthermore, Minister Edtstadler says that in many BP countries, “popularity no longer believes in the real possibility of membership, and has long been displaced towards Russian or Chinese narrators”.

Therefore, says Austrian Minister “The EU must take the lead in the Western Balkans and thus give membership processes new momentum”.

The region towards approaching should be in the Union's central geopolitical interest. However, excessive bureaucracy and further delays in membership negotiations by individual member states have the opposite effect and generally weakens us”, notes Austrian Minister for the European Union and Constitution Caroline Edtstadler.

But it stresses that this does not mean that partners in the Western Balkans should not push ahead with reforms and implement them concretely, “instead, there is no short way to become a full EU member”.

“However, it is absurd when such drastic steps as changing a country's name are not rewarded, but further establish new conditions that are politically impossible to implement. We are losing the last part of the EU's already fragile credibility in the Western Balkan region. For this reason, me and Foreign Minister Schallenberg have been trying for some time to bring the mutual benefits of EU integration with citizens and are committed to making the process more dynamic”, she points out.

The Austrian minister said her country has submitted proposals that should provide tangible incentives and rewards to “for painful but necessary reforms -- from regular participation in debates in Brussels and Luxembourg on candidate countries, to concrete financial incentives modeled on recovery plans and recovery -- to much closer ones.

Among other things, Schallenberg says the recent incidents between Kosovo and Serbia are indications that the “lain of the Western Balkans on the sidelines for more years is extremely dangerous”.

The latest <x0) incidents between Kosovo and Serbia have shown us how fragile the situation is in the region. Progress and resulting stability is a security issue for the EU”, it emphasises.

According to her, since the war of aggression against Ukraine, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and the recent terrorist attacks on Israel, “cannot close one eye and pretend that the conflicts in our near neighbourhood are unimaginable”.

Schallenberg says that if Europe wants to turn its solidarity words with the Western Balkans into action, it should target the following five points:

1. Opening membership negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2023;
2. Membership conferences with Albania and Northern Macedonia at the beginning of 2017;
3. concrete progress with Montenegro and Serbia prior to EU elections;
4. Kosovo recognition of all 27 The EU as soon as possible and granting candidate status before the EU elections;
5. The concrete, individual accession targets for each of the six countries when the new EU Commission takes office.

I am fully convinced that the European family is not complete without our six partners in the Western Balkans. Let's show that Europe is capable of operating at its gates, not in its own inner courtyard”, the Austrian Minister for the European Union and the Constitution, Caroline Edtstadler. /Klankosova. tv