North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski on Friday called on the United States and the European Union to help Western Balkan countries restore new synergy and reset the region and revive joint cooperation.
Addressing the panel “Resetting the EU-US synergy towards the Western Balkans” taking place in Ohrid at the Prespa Forum Dialogue, Pendarovski said it is indispensable to implement reforms that would make people happy and motivate young people to stay in their countries.
“That’s why you should help us, help the people who live in the region. Without combining our energies, visions and projects, we cannot make it. If the goal is to reintroduce new ties, which proved fruitful in the 1990s under different circumstances, no one would be able to say the Western Balkans didn’t make it 10 years ago. In the next 3, 5, 10 years, let us slow down negative processes prompting people to move out, leave the region, because the smartest, youngest and most dynamic force is leaving the region. In fact, we would have no one to rely on in real life, to experience real growth of our economies,” Pendarovski said.
The Western Balkans, he noted, has been lagging behind the EU economically, even more so than the previous decade, whereas Washington has been only registering a decrease in all democratic indicators.
“EU is not capable of leading on its own, the US wouldn’t want to lead on its own and regional elites are not interested. I’d be very honest because I am too part of these regional elites – they wouldn’t want to make efforts to thoroughly change our societies. The final result is that the Western Balkans, especially over the past decade, had lagged behind the EU economy-wise, more than in the 2000s. Washington is here only to record the drop in all democratic indicators. Democratically speaking, the Western Balkans has backslid compared to 10-15 years ago. On paper, the Western Balkans has a population of 18 million, in reality there is four million less,” concluded Pendarovski.
The world, he added, has changed dramatically, while the Western Balkans has remained the same, all but the wars.
According to the head of state, resetting is possible only as light resetting.
“We won’t witness any synergy between the two parts of the transatlantic community, which is so important to us like in the 1990s. It means that regional political leaders will have to carry most of the responsibility,” President Pendarovski told the panel in Ohrid.
