TIRANA, November 14 – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken against the bilateralization of the EU membership process in a meeting with his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Micotaqis in Berlin on Tuesday.
Chancellor Scholz said this in response to a question about the recent disputes between Greece and Albania during the press conference with Greek Prime Minister Micotaqis. The social democrat chancellor emphasized that in all the disputes between the countries of the region, Berlin is “on the side of the EU membership process, because it wants the candidates for membership to reach it as soon as possible”.
Scholz was quoted by DW as saying that it is necessary to move towards further rapprochement of the countries of the Western Balkans, which were given the promise of membership exactly 20 years ago at the 2003 Thessaloniki Summit.
The European Commission has recommended the start of talks on the three group-chapters until the end of 2023. For the talks to open, the unanimous support of the 27 countries in the European Council of the EU member states is needed. On November 11, Greece decided not to join other EU member states in fulfilling the European Commission’s request to the European Council for the opening of negotiations for the first three chapters.
The reason for this is the ongoing imprisonment of the elected mayor of the Municipality of Himara, southern Albania, Fredi Beleri by the Albanian authorities.
The German and Greek leaders also met on Monday in a small working group, with various leaders of several EU countries, such as Hungary, Cyprus, Slovakia, at a dinner given on Monday evening by the president of the Council of EU’s Charles Michel in Berlin. The aim of the dinner was to reach an agreement between the countries on a number of issues related to the future of the EU. /argumentum.al
