Chancellor Angela Merkel following the Western Balkan Summit: Making progress with reconciliation in the Balkans - Hoofdinhoud

On 10 November Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the states in the Western Balkan region to push ahead with reconciliation. This would allow EU accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania to begin before the end of 2020.

This year, two countries jointly prepared the Western Balkan Summit, one of them an EU member state (Bulgaria) and the other an accession candidate (North Macedonia). Chancellor Angela Merkel praised this première in the history of the Berlin Process summits. She thanked the hosts, the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and the North Macedonian Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev, for organising the summit. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s summit took the form of a video conference.

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Who are the Western Balkan states?

The term “Western Balkan” has a political connotation, as well being a geographical designation. It was introduced at the EU summit in Vienna in 1998 and refers to the Balkan states that are not yet EU member states. The term thus currently designates Albania and the former Yugoslavian states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia - but not Slovenia or Croatia, which acceded to the EU in 2004 and 2013 respectively.