EC President Antonio Costa will visit Kosovo on 15 May as part of his tour of the Western Balkans next week. The visit to Kosovo comes ahead of the European Political Union Summit, which will take place in Tirana on 16 May. According to EU sources, Costa will also have an informal dinner with regional leaders.
The President of the European Council (EC), Antonio Costa, is expected to visit Kosovo on May 15, as part of a tour he will conduct throughout next week in the countries of the Western Balkans region.
Costa’s visit to the region is scheduled on the eve of the European Political Community Summit, which will take place on Friday, May 16, in Tirana, Albania.
This will be the first visit of the new President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, to the Western Balkans region since he took up the post of President of the EC.
According to a source in the European Union, this visit to the region will culminate with an informal dinner that Costa will have with the leaders of the Western Balkans during his stay in Tirana, while the meeting will also be attended by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, and the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, whose country holds the current presidency of the EU.
During a speech at the Center for European Policy in March, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Costa confirmed that he would visit the Western Balkans region in May.
“Enlargement is the European Union’s best geopolitical investment. That is why I have visited Ukraine twice in the last four months, Moldova in March and why the first summit I chaired was with the Western Balkans, a region I will visit in May,” Costa said.
He also emphasized that the EU must work decisively to integrate the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova, describing enlargement as one of the union’s greatest geostrategic achievements.
And at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, an EU official was asked mostly about future relations between the European Union and Serbia, after Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić ignored EU calls not to travel to Moscow for the Victory over Fascism parade. The EU has said that Serbia is a candidate country for EU membership, that it will remain so, but that relations between Serbia and the European Union will be judged on the individual merits of each country.
The EU official also said that the bloc’s member states have already made clear what they think of Serbia’s behavior. But he refused to say whether or not there will be consequences for Serbia because of Vučić’s action.
The European Political Community is a pan-European initiative, which brings together more than 47 leaders from different European countries and from EU institutions.
The summit in Tirana will be the sixth in a row to be held in this format. The summit will be co-chaired by the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, and the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama.
The topics of discussion at the summit will be the common future of Europe, security, the protection of democracy and the empowerment of young people.
The EU has said that this will be a very good opportunity to promote both the strong ties of the Western Balkans region with the European Union, but also as a general European platform to discuss common challenges.