Remarks by President Donald Tusk after the EU-Western Balkans Summit

Good afternoon. Before anything else, let me thank Prime Minister Borissov and his whole team; you did something excellent and I am really impressed when it comes to your effectiveness, determination, and mainly because of your engagement we can say today that the summit was successful, and of course thank you for the wonderful Bulgarian hospitality. Blagodaria Boyko, blagodaria prelestna Bulgaria(thank you Boyko, thank you beautiful Bulgaria) We have just concluded a very good and fruitful EU-Western Balkans summit. I believe that it took us too long since our last meeting in Thessaloniki fifteen years ago, and this is why we decided to meet again in two years in Croatia. This is the best illustration that the integration with the Western Balkans is a top priority for the EU. Today we reaffirmed our mutual commitment to the European perspective for the whole region. As I said during my recent visit to the region, the European Union is and will remain the most reliable partner of the entire Western Balkans.  And in very concrete terms we discussed how to improve connections with and within the Western Balkans region. We are speaking about human, economic, digital and infrastructure connections. The package of measures we signed a while ago - the so-called "Sofia Priority Agenda" - adds new initiatives to our current cooperation. For example, we agreed to double the Erasmus+ to allow more youth to study in the EU. We agreed to work towards the lowering of roaming charges and we agreed to create more favourable conditions for private investments by providing better bank guarantees. And to avoid any confusion, let me be very clear: The connectivity agenda is neither an alternative nor a...