“Albania deserves the EU stratus”
08/01/2014

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“Albania deserves the EU status in June”, declared the Greek Deputy Prime Minister, Evangelos Venizellos, in an exclusive interview for the Greek public news agency, only a few hours after the official ceremony in Athens for the Greek presidency of the European Union.

According to Venizello, who is also Foreign Minister, Albania’s integration progress is good and Athens will promote the status for the neighboring country during their presidency.

“There are countries where it can be promoted faster, such as Montenegro. Albania’s performance is also good, and we are in favor of it right now. We will review this again in June, during the Greek presidency”, he declared.

Venizellos underlined that he will contact with all the Balkan countries, by visiting the Balkan capitals as leader of the Council of Foreign Ministers, in order to see if the integration perspective can be easier when thereis a good will from the other side.

“I believe that this semester is a good chance for discussing the perspective of the Balkan countries, by making concrete steps that will give a significance to this European perspective.

The negotiations for Serbia will start on January 21st, according to the Greek leader in the Eu, and this is very important not only for Serbia, but also for Kosovo.

As regards the Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, Venizellos considered it a problematic case, since the government of the neighboring country is not helping with their stance in fulfilling the criteria that are needed by every country, in respect of the Copenhagen Criteria, International Rights and good neighboring.