The heads of diplomacy of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries in Prague supported today the start of negotiations with Albania and Northern Macedonia to include them in the EU. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jacek Czaputowicz said, “we want to maintain the pro-European orientation of these countries”.
The minister will visit both of these countries next week along with the heads of diplomacy of Latvia and Lithuania. “We want to convey our support to the societies in these countries”, said Czaputowicz. He added that the European Union should fulfill its obligations. In his opinion, the V4 countries, which along with Poland are formed by the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, support the process of enlarging the Union to include western Balkan countries. The head of Polish diplomacy noted that the EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, attending a meeting in Prague, said that Albania and Northern Macedonia had made progress in democratising the political system and deserved to start talks. “The countries of the Western Balkans are surrounded by EU Member States and it is in our strategic interest to include this region in the Union”, Varhelyi told reporters.