TIRANA, Aug. 31 – The promotion of dialogue and cooperation among the region’s young people was a key aspect of events scheduled around the Vienna summit of the Western Balkan leaders, an event held under the auspices of German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week.
Civil Society activists from the region had an opportunity to introduce to their leaders their top ideas, and the civil society component will become a regular feature of future Berlin Process gatherings like the one held in Vienna last week.
At a special edition of an EU-funded regional TV talk show, Okruzenje (Vicinities), Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his Serb counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, discuss some matter directly, moderated by Regional Cooperation Council’s secretary general, Goran Svilanovic.
Both Rama and Vucic pledged to work together to establish a cross-Balkans youth cooperation office to improve relations between countries in the region.
They supported the idea initiated by several youth NGOs to establish a regional youth cooperation office in the Western Balkans based on a similar initiative to improve relations between France and Germany after World War II.
“Youth cooperation was one of the instruments of that historic process that contributed to the creation of the EU,” Rama said.
Vucic said that it was important for Serbs and Albanians to talk cooperation and make mutual compromises because these two peoples are the most numerous in the region.
“If someone thinks this is not an important enough reason to start to cooperate immediately and to start thinking about how the backbone of relations in the Balkans will look like in the future, that person doesn’t understand the future and doesn’t look into the future,” Vucic said.
Leaders from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia signed a declaration on establishing the youth office during the Western Balkans Summit in Vienna last week.
It is set to be officially opened on Aug. 27, 2016, during the next Western Balkans Summit in Paris, and will be funded from the participating states’ budgets and the EU.
