Struga, 15 June 2023 (MIA) - We don't want to see alternative approaches to EU membership, but ways to speed up the process, Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani told Thursday's panel "Is the Franco-German initiative on EU reform putting the engine back in (loco) motion?" held as part of the Prespa Forum Dialogue in Struga. 

"It's been twenty years since the Thessaloniki Summit, and that only shows how disappointing and slow this process of accession to the EU is. And since 2003, after the commitment was made that this region will join the EU, of the Western Balkan countries only Croatia joined the Union, so we have a problem," said Osmani. 

He pointed out that the Russian aggression against Ukraine has served as a significant reminder that EU enlargement is not only an internally integrative process, but also a matter of foreign policy and has security consequences.

"It's time to say enough is enough, we can't carry on as usual. There are opinions that the EU is not ready to absorb new member states mainly because of the complexity of the decision-making process in a Union of 27, and considering further enlargement the EU could become completely dysfunctional, and I think this is the main reason as to why some EU member states don't have a clear decision in terms of completing this process," Osmani said. 

According to him, such hesitation brings great unpredictability with the Western Balkan countries and unfortunately this is also reflected in people's perception of the process itself.

"And we see that the popularity of the idea of the EU in the region is deteriorating. If you consider the example of North Macedonia where we see historically low levels of approval of the process from over 90 to 50 percent. This is because certain things had to be done in the region, without having the results delivered by the other side," said Osmani. 

The Minister noted that North Macedonia represents a paradigm of this process of endless accepting - the name change, and now the constitutional amendments.

"We don't want to see alternative approaches to EU membership, such as a multi-level European Union, but see ways to speed up this process and make it credible," Osmani told the panel in Struga. 

Photo: MIA