Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg will present the “Friends of the Western Balkans” group on Friday during the European Forum in Wachau, which includes seven EU member states that support rapid European integration of Western European countries. Balkans, Euractiv reported on Thursday.

Oleksandr Shallenberg, Minister of Foreign Affairs of AustriaPhoto: Tomas Tkacik-SOPA Images / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia

The group includes Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Slovakia and Slovenia and intends to take decisive action, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The European Union must “move decisively forward in the enlargement process for South-Eastern Europe. Although it is right to focus on Ukraine, the EU should not lose sight of the countries of South-Eastern Europe,” added Austrian diplomacy.

Shallenberg invited three of his colleagues to Wachau – Miroslav Vlachovskyi (Slovakia), Jan Lipavskyi (Czech Republic) and Gordan Grlic Radman (Croatia). The US special representative for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, representatives of civil society and the Bosnian diaspora in Austria will also take part in the forum.

The Austrian government opens its doors to the Western Balkans

The group “Friends of the Western Balkans” intends to adopt the Gottweig Declaration, which emphasizes the importance of “accelerated and gradual” integration of the Western Balkans before full accession to the EU.

The Western Balkans (a region that includes Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo) remains one of the main routes for illegal immigration to Europe, even if the number of arrivals to the EU via this route has decreased. . It will be recalled that Austria touched on the problem of illegal migration when, at the end of last year, it announced the blocking of Romania’s accession to the Schengen zone.

On the other hand, the Austrian Greens criticized the fact that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloni was also invited to the forum in Wachau.

The head of the Austrian Greens delegation in the European Parliament, Monika Vana, said that it is “shameful and disturbing how conservatives are catering to the wishes of the extreme right.”

Instead, Austrian MEP Lucas Mandl (a member of the Austrian People’s Party, which is part of the EPP) qualified the environmentalists’ criticism as completely unfounded: “Not even one adjective that the Greens use to describe Maloney is justified by her policies as a government leader.”