As he had previously announced in an interview with Euronews Albania, Prime Minister Edi Rama will embark on his Balkan tour to meet with the prime ministers and presidents of these countries.
The visits are scheduled to take place on 6-7 July, with Rama expected to address the Berlin Process as well as the Open Balkan initiative, following the Prime Minister’s announcement that the initiative had served its aim.
“The Open Balkan initiative was born out of the need to push forward the Berlin Process, and it has accomplished the mission for which it was born. Now we need to fully engage in the Berlin Process because we have this opportunity,” said the Prime Minister during an interview for Euronews Albania on 1 July.
The Prime Minister will be accompanied by a part of the governmental cabinet in his visits to Western Balkan countries’ capitals: Belgrade, Sarajevo, Pristina, Skopje and Podgorica.
On 16 October, Tirana will host the Berlin Process summit for the first time, nearly ten years after its creation by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“For the first time since [former German Chancellor] Angela Merkel initiated the process with the Berlin Summit in 2014, Albania is expecting a summit to be held in Tirana in October. It is an extremely important summit as we prepare for a significant step forward… While we need to focus on this, of course, the Berlin Process is our main axis,” declared Rama during the same interview for Euronews Albania.
The Open Balkan was an initiative spearheaded by Albania, Serbia and North Macedonia as a way to improve political relations through free movement of goods, services and people in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula.
While the idea dates back to the early 1990s, and is attributed to former Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano, it was abandoned due to the Yugoslav Wars. It was reintroduced in the agenda in 2018 by Prime Minister Edi Rama during a meeting held in the frameworks of the Berlin Process (a platform for high-level cooperation between the six countries of the Western Balkans, EU member states and institutions, international financial institutions, and regional civil society and businesses).
The initiative was meant to include the rest of the Western Balkan countries, namely Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Hercegovina, but it never saw their engagement.
Kosovo refuted to participate ever since the beginning, with key political figures arguing they could not participate in an initiative where other non-recognizing countries sat, referring to Serbia, and Bosnia and Hercegovina who both do not recognize Kosovo’s statehood.
On the other hand, Bosnia and Hercegovina, as well as Montenegro never fully engaged with the initiative despite attending one of the Open Balkan summits, citing the need for internal political debate to decide whether there were benefits to participating or not.
Ever since its inception, the Open Balkan initiative was met with criticism and skepticism whether it would be an initiative to benefit Serbia more than the rest of the participating countries, even though leaders had stressed common benefits for all Western Balkan countries.
Prime Minister Rama’s decision to end the initiative was met with surprise by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Talking to TV Prva in Belgrade a day after Rama’s announcement, Vučić said he did not believe what the Albanian Prime Minister had said and warned of a meeting to clarify on the matter.
“The Open Balkan is an autonomous and autochthonous idea of people from the Balkans. It is an expression of our desires and relations, not something we do under someone else’s rule,” the Serbian leader said, somewhat rebuking Rama’s previous claims that he had been the one to push the Open Balkan initiative forward.
