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| Mogherini (middle) and Western Balkan Prime Ministers |
The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini gathered the prime ministers of the Western Balkans in Brussels on Monday evening to discuss a way to integrate these countries.
She met first separately the prime ministers of Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In her meeting with the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, Mogherini has shown the readiness of the European Commission for a recommendation to open the EU membership negotiations in 2018, pointing out that further concrete results are needed in key reforms to make this willingness come true.The informal meeting aims to reconfirm the "clear support for the European future of the Western Balkans", but also to seek the commitment of governments to meet the criteria for integration.
In February, the European Commission is expected to unfold the Western Balkans strategy.
In September, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stressed in the annual speech that the European Union "is strengthening its support to all partners in achieving achievable and realistic goals so that their progress is irreversible at the end of our mandate ".
He stressed that "sustainability in the European Union's neighborhood means holding open the prospect of the Western Balkans for integration, but none of the countries in the region can join the bloc within the current mandate of the commission that ends in 2019."