The President of the Republic of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, today, during the one-day working visit to the Federal Republic of Germany, participated at the conference “Balkan Dialogues”. As one of the panelists at the conference in Berlin, President Pendarovski spoke on “EU Enlargement – Unkept Promise – What Now?”.
Referring to the October decision of the European Union not to give the Republic of North Macedonia a date for negotiations, President Pendarovski emphasized that the EU must not omit the Western Balkan countries because, as he said, the citizens of those countries deserve better conditions and greater standard of living.
“I would like to remind you that of the six countries in the region, Montenegro and Serbia have been negotiating for years, that is, for too long, two countries, namely North Macedonia and Albania, have been waiting years to get a date for the start of negotiations, and no one mentions the other two, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, at all”, President Pendarovski said.
In this regard, as President Pendarovski said, the citizens of these countries are slowly losing hope that we will feel the benefits and values of EU membership, i.e. President Pendarovski added, they doubt that the Western Balkans region will be in the same situation as Turkey.
At the “Balkan Dialogues” conference, President Pendarovski reiterated the position that the Republic of North Macedonia is not against the new enlargement methodology of the European Union, nor is it against the reversibility of the process if a country is significantly lagging behind in the process of negotiations with the Union.
At the same time, President Pendarovski stressed that our country does not need the European Union only because of its access to the common market, but above all, because of the political and democratic values that it has and is practiced in the EU member states. The same values, as President Pendarovski concluded, are unfortunately not yet satisfactory either in North Macedonia or in other countries in the Western Balkans.
Regarding the negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo, President Pendarovski said that he expects this issue to be closed with the active involvement of our Western friends, the US and the EU.
