Athens, 31 May 2022 (MIA) – We call on our European partners to show greater courage and to give a new impetus to the EU enlargement process and not to leave behind the historic and geopolitical dimension of this issue, Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said. “The decision to open accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia would be a decisive step in this direction,” Dendias said in the interview with the media outlet Newsbomb. According to MIA’s Athens correspondent, FM Dendias said that for the Western Balkans region, the EU accession process is "the only safe path to peace, stability, reform and prosperity, it is a way for the region to move forward, leaving behind what we usually call the Balkan past,” while for the EU integration "is above all a geopolitical necessity and it is important not to allow the creation of a 'gap' on the map of Europe, which the revisionist powers would try to fill with hegemonic ambitions and a destabilizing agenda." Dendias noted that it is in the interest of Athens for the countries in the region to move forward in their accession process, to develop economically, to stabilize, noting that Greece does not see its Balkan presence as a "condemnation", but as a "historic mission", as it is the oldest EU member state in the Balkans and feels a "historic responsibility to direct the region towards the EU, but also the EU towards the region". He noted that this is one of the reasons why Greece has always been "the engine of the region’s EU path" and through the 2003 Thessaloniki Agenda and therefore "continues to work hard to achieve this goal and send a message in two directions." “On the one hand, we call on our European partners to show greater courage and to give new impetus to the EU enlargement process. This issue should not be viewed only in its technical parameters, leaving behind its historical and geopolitical dimension. The decision to open accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia would be a decisive step in this direction. The other message is to the region, which I had the opportunity to emphasize during my recent visits to Tirana and Skopje and I will repeat it during my visits to other capitals in the coming days in the next period,” Dendias said. He also noted that they call on the countries of the region to continue to consistently fulfill the preconditions for their European path, to implement the necessary reforms, to respect good neighbourly relations and their contractual obligations, to resolve their bilateral issues in accordance with international law and to "direct all their energy in that regard, and not in unhistorical attempts to raise non-existent issues.”