Rama: The EU should cooperate particularly closely with Serbia

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said today that the Western Balkans - European Union summit, scheduled for tomorrow in Tirana, demonstrated the increased geostrategic interest of the EU in that region during Russia's war against Ukraine, and pointed out that the Union must work closely with Serbia, which had not yet joined the sanctions against Moscow, the Associated Press agency writes.

"The moment is fantastic," Rama said in an interview with AP and that "no one could even imagine this just two years ago, and now it's happening," Danas reports.

Rama will host a one-day summit aimed at revitalizing the process of expanding the Union to other countries, and the meeting will focus on Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

According to the Prime Minister of Albania, who previously criticized the Union for slowing down the accession process, the war in Ukraine proved to be a "reminder of the vulnerability" of the Western Balkan region and encouraged the Union to bring the countries there "under the democratic auspices of Europe."

Rama also said that the Union must work "closely with Serbia" which has not joined the European sanctions against Russia.

"The common voice of the Western Balkans... helped to push more European leaders" towards the process in which countries should join the European Union, because "you need the Balkans, the Western Balkans, as much as the Western Balkans need the European Union," Rama said.

He called tomorrow's meeting in Tirana "the most important event in the history of international relations" of Albania, pointing out that the former communist country was "completely cut off from the world and from Europe" until 1990.

As Rama assessed, the summit would bring "a lot to the Western Balkans, to our country (Albania). It will bring a lot of positive energy, a lot of hope, a lot of new roads, new paths that will define themselves in the next steps", and he called the Union's decision to hold the summit outside its territory "a good prediction for the future".