EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said that the European Union is committed to the rapid implementation of the region's growth strategy after meeting in Tirana on July 17 with top government officials from five Balkan countries that want to become members of the EU.
Varhelyi said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama invited him to Tirana to discuss ways to speed up the economic and social integration of the Western Balkans into the EU.
“We are committed to the rapid implementation of this convergence plan," Varhelyi said on Twitter.
Rama held a working lunch with the prime ministers of Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Montenegro and the chairman of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Council of Ministers to prepare for a summit scheduled to take place on October 16 on progress toward European Union integration.
The government of Kosovo was not represented at the meeting because Prime Minister Albin Kurti is participating in an international symposium in Greece.
Albania will host the October summit as part of the Berlin Process, an initiative of Germany and France to encourage the Balkan countries in their path toward EU membership.
Rama expects the summit "to have a meaningful outcome for the Western Balkans and serve as a further step” in facilitating the interactions between the countries of the region with the EU.
Dimitar Kovacevski, the prime minister of North Macedonia, said the key topics discussed on July 17 at the informal meeting were the EU plan for the accelerated integration of the Western Balkan countries, which is based on several basic pillars.
The first is how to accelerate the countries' alignment with the EU's common market.
"The second is the increase of funds for financing important regional projects, the third is the increase of economic cooperation and integration of the countries of the Western Balkans, and the fourth is the acceleration of key reforms in each of these countries," Kovacevski said.
He pointed out that it is an ambitious plan that everyone will work on together.
The Western Balkan countries are already working on putting into effect agreements that were signed at a meeting in Berlin last year on the mutual recognition of things such as diplomas, Kovacevski said.