Western Balkans Summit Vienna 2015
The Western Balkans Summit will take place on Thursday, 27 August 2015 in Vienna. This year’s summit is part of the Berlin Process, a five-year process marked by yearly summits in order to underline the commitment to EU-enlargement towards the Western Balkans region. The focus of the initiative is on those countries of the Western Balkans that are not yet EU-members: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The EU-participants at the Summit are those countries, who have committed themselves to organize next years’ summit meetings: in addition to last year’s and this year’s organizers Germany and Austria, this are France and Italy. The process is also strongly supported by Slovenia and Croatia. Last year’s summit took place in Berlin on 28 August 2014 and gave important impulses for progress in the areas of regional cooperation, economy and the rule of law.
The Vienna Western Balkans Summit is divided into three segments: for Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Ministers of Economy, followed by a concluding joint working luncheon hosted by the Austrian President.
The main topics of the Summit will be ‘infrastructure and connectivity’, ‘regional cooperation’, ‘youth’ and the ‘refugee challenge’. A civil society forum is going to take place on 26 August in Vienna, the results of which will be fed into the Summit meetings. During this Forum a discussion will be held between EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement, Prime Ministers of Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and six representatives of civil society, one per each country, Albania being represented by the Director of ShtetiWeb Ardian Haçkaj.
EXTENDING THE TRANS-EUROPEAN TRANSPORT NETWORK (TEN-T)
AGENDA Civil Society Forum
Libraria Shteti Web
