Foreign relations of Kosovo

Brdo pri Kranju – Parliamentary Speaker Igor Zorčič hosted a meeting of parliamentary speakers from the Western Balkans on Monday, saying that the EU must give the region a clear signal on when it could expect EU accession. The speakers of the Serbian and Montenegrin parliaments also called for more clarity regarding the EU enlargement.

Participating in the Bled Strategic Forum, Albanian Prime Minister also criticized EU institutions for delays in enlargement.
"There is no future for Europe without the Western Balkans within the EU. If the EU continues like this, of course it will not be good for us, but it will be even worse for the EU," Rama said, as reported by the Kosovo Press.

"The German government has information about the Open Balkans initiative. We believe that any regional cooperation in the Western Balkans should be welcomed," reads a written answer to Tanjug's question about Germany's position on the Open Balkans initiative.

Behgjet Pacolli, the leader of New Kosovo Alliance (AKR) was speaking on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the verdict of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which then "determined that the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo did not violate international law."

She told her successors that the process should not be interrupted and that, despite the need for a lot of engagement and patience, they should use the opportunity to accept the countries of the Western Balkans - Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.

Leaders at an online summit on Monday, part of the Berlin Process, an initiative to boost regional cooperation among Western Balkan countries and their European integration, pledged to boost economic ties while affirming the need for EU integration of all the countries in the region.

During their meeting in Berlin, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas signed a joint declaration in which, among other things, they reaffirmed their countries' commitment to the security, stability, prosperity, and full sovereignty of the six Western Balkans countries, as well as to their European and Euro-Atlantic paths.

On the occasion of the executive order of the President of the USA, Joseph Biden, on the expansion of emergency measures in the Western Balkans, the officials in Brussels say that the EU has its obligations towards partners in the region, and that sanctions are not part of the current European policy in the Western Balkans.

"The European perspective continues to be a major driver of change in the Western Balkan countries and young people and the civil society in these countries play a key  role in this process," said caretaker Foreign Minister Svetlan Stoev on Tuesday.

Countries from Western Balkans - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia are likely to benefit from the trend of relocating production by EU companies from Asia close to home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This is stated in a report of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Research.