The veto principle should be maintained at the heart of the European project, Europe should honour its commitments to the Western Balkans and the accession process of North Macedonia and Albania should be accelerated without separating the two membership bids, were the three messages sent today by Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Miltiadis Varvitsiotis during his speech at the 6th Delphi Economic Forum, held in Zappeion Megaron.
In particular, participating in the session themed “Small State Diplomacy in a Complex Order” along with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides and the Deputy Prime Minister of North Macedonia Nikola Dimitrov, Mr. Varvitsiotis stressed that the European Union is a voluntary delegation of powers to Brussels by the Member States, provided that they can veto it at any time if national interests are affected. Therefore, any thought of abolishing the veto power is against this Union of Values and Interests. “We want to work and cooperate in a framework where all member states have to follow the same rules, no matter how big or small they are,” the Alternate Minister pointed out.
Referring to the accession perspective of the Western Balkans, the Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs underscored that splitting the EU membership bids of Albania and Northern Macedonia would be “catastrophic” for the security environment in the region, and that Greece is not willing to accept such a thing. In addition, he made it clear that the new simplified accession process for all the Western Balkans – including Serbia and Montenegro – should be accelerated, while Europe, for its part, should abide by its commitments and not delay the procedures on condition that the candidate countries meet European criteria. In addition, he stressed that it is important for Greece to share its northern borders with EU member states, as it already does with Bulgaria.
Finally, concerning the management of the pandemic by the European Union, Mr. Varvitsiotis noted that “the pandemic underlined the importance of extensive cooperation and proved that no one can serve these goals on their own”, while the Union through the joint vaccination program managed to avoid potential competition between Member States. He added that the European Union must share the additional vaccines with the countries in need, especially those in our region.
