Together with the Slovenian and Czech Foreign Ministers, Anže Logar and Jakub Kulhánek, both part of the Central 5, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg sent a strong signal over the Pentecost weekend in Skopje and Tirana to Northern Macedonia and Albania on their way into the EU.
We are the Three Musketeers,
said Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg at today’s press conference with his Albanian counterpart, Olta Xhacka.
We do not need to talk about geopolitical strategies in the EU if we cannot manage our immediate neighbourhood. This is our neighbourhood – politically, economically and culturally.
At the press conference in Skopje together with the Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, when asked about the difficult historical background and the numerous delays and setbacks in the process of rapprochement of the Western Balkan states with the EU, the Foreign Minister stated:
Europe is a historically dense region,
said Foreign Minister Schallenberg, where you cannot walk a metre without coming across a tombstone, a wound, a hurt, a cultural legacy.
I believe that Europe is an incredible remedy for such wounds.
He has great expectations of the upcoming EU Council Presidency with regard to the progress of EU enlargement:
With Slovenia and my colleague Anze Logar, I see this topic in the best hands,
confirms Alexander Schallenberg. However, he also thanked the current Portuguese Presidency, which had put the issue clearly back at the top of the European Union’s list of priorities.
Not least because of the close human interdependence – around 550,000 people from this region live in Austria – Austria is a strong and traditional advocate of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans. This human proximity has recently found eloquent expression in the provision of 651,000 vaccination doses for the people in the Western Balkans: Austria made the transfer of these vaccine doses possible through legal agreements with the manufacturer and the partners in the Western Balkans as well as through their pre-financing.
