Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said the European Union should offer the integration of all six nations of the Western Balkans into the EU by 2033 in what he called a “bold but necessary step”.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has lent a new sense of urgency to the need to tie Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo closer to the 27-member EU, in part to counter growing Russian and Chinese influence in the region.
The link could entail full membership or an alternative community.
In an article published on Friday in Politico ahead of a summit in Greece of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), Mitsotakis said the EU needs to prove that when “it sets out a vision it has the intent and the capacity to follow through”.
The vision of EU accession for the region, he said, has become “blurry, fading in the eyes of frustrated and disillusioned citizens” as EU expansion has stalled in recent years over security, governance and migration concerns.
An EU-Western Balkans summit is scheduled on June 23.
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