Today (24 October 2024) took place the event “Advancing Regional Cooperation: The Path Towards Common Regional Market and EU Integration in the Western Balkans”, organized by Cooperation and Development Institute (CDI) in Tirana and Center for Civil Society Promotion. The event was the final one concluding the CRM Week in the Western Balkans, following a series of events in Tirana, Podgorica, Skopje, Belgrade and Pristina. CRM Week is an initiatie of CDI, supported by the German Foreign Federal Office and carried out in partnership with civil society organizations from the region. The main focus of the series of events was discussing the progress and challenges in advancing the CRM agenda, the impact of the Growth Plan reforms, and the region’s gradual integration into the EU’s Single Market
We recently marked ten years of the Berlin Process as a platform for stronger cooperation between the countries of the Western Balkans, as we were reminded by the Head of the Department for Economic Affairs and Development of the German Embassy, Daniel Stinsky. He recalled that thanks to the facilitation of his country, the biggest advances in regional cooperation were made, and emphasized that the recently adopted CRM Action Plan will be a cornerstone for the future of the Western Balkans.
CEFTA’s Trade Expert on Cross-Cutting Measures, Marko Mandić spoke in more detail about the achieved progress and pointed out that the CEFTA Committee adopted nine new agreements this year that will improve trade, create jobs and improve consumer rights in the region. “In the last ten years, exports from the CEFTA zone to the EU have increased, but we have great growth within CEFTA as well as between countries,” said Mandić and gave an example of the growth of exchange in the service sector, which tripled.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina emphasized that the Berlin Process and the Common Regional Market effects are tangible. Assistant Minister Aida Hodžić drew attention to the fact that from 2020, in surveys about our country’s accession to the EU, support for this process is falling by about three percent per year. “The number of those who are against is not increasing, but the number of those who are undecided or those who do not have an opinion is, which indicates a lack of clear vision and perspective that this process brings about change. The Common Regional Market and the Berlin Process are something whose results can be directly felt by the citizens”, said the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The participants agreed that the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans is something that goes hand in hand with the Common Regional Market, and that it shows that this region has not gone beyond the focus of the EU even after the Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is why a little more attention is paid to the expansion of the Union to the East. Nevertheless, the key tasks are before the states that have to implement the expected reforms.
Aida Soko, Economic Adviser at the Delegation of EU to BiH, expressed her hope that the reform agenda of BiH will soon be fully agreed on in a positive atmosphere, and pointed out that there are many reasons for satisfaction in the 110 measures that have been agreed and approved so far. She mentioned that the payment of EU funds to support reforms will be based on performance, and that states can gain a lot, but also lose a lot.
The hosts of the meeting, CPCD Director Aida Daguda and CDI Director of Research Ardian Hackaj used the opportunity to mention the role of civil society in integration processes. Daguda emphasized that civil society organizations contributed not only by monitoring the process, but also by actively participating in it, and Hackaj described how numerous suggestions and proposals that came from civil society were incorporated into agreements on regional cooperation and today form a good part of the basis for the concept “accession before membership”, which prepares the countries of the Western Balkans for integration into the EU and its free market.