The EU integration of the Western Balkans is a condition for ensuring stability, security and common progress of the EU as a whole. The Montenegrin Head of State’s visit in Bulgaria in the first days of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU is symbolic and shows that our country highly appreciates the individual achievements and real reforms conducted by the EU candidate-member states. This is what President Rumen Radev said, who held talks with his Montenegrin counterpart Filip Vujanovic at 2 Dondukov street today.
Filip Vujanovic is on an official visit to Bulgaria at the invitation of the Bulgarian President. He is the first Head of State visiting our country in the year of Bulgaria’s Presidency of the Council of the EU, which is a recognition of Montenegro’s progress in its EU and NATO integration.
“Determining the Western Balkan’s European integration as a major priority of the Bulgarian Presidency sets two basic goals – to activate the dialogue between the countries in the region and the European institutions, on the one hand, and to strengthen the communication, mutual cooperation and the processes of building good-neighborly relations between the countries in the region, on the other” Rumen Radev told his Montenegrin counterpart.
“Bulgaria supports the adopted approach toward EU enlargement, based on the candidate-states’ individual achievements. Montenegro has set an example of success thanks to the consistent policies it has pursued and the reforms it has conducted. It has shown how a country from the region may achieve results in the name of its better future and the better future of its neighbors,” President Radev said.
Rumen Radev and Filip Vujanovic agreed that the cooperation in the sphere of European integration is an important prerequisite for strengthening the bilateral cooperation between Bulgaria and Montenegro. The exchange of investments, tourism, education and science were among the highlighted spheres of mutual interest and the two countries should pool efforts to ensure them. “Together with President Vujanovic we are not completely content with the level of trade and the exchange of tourists between our two countries. We should work more to ensure transport, energy and digital connectivity in the region, and to make sure that our people travel better, more often and more freely,” Rumen Radev was adamant.
The two Heads of State took on the commitment to jointly work to build an International Sustainable Technologies Institute with a scientific center for Eastern Europe with support from the EU, which should implement joint scientific and high-tech projects in medicine and will unite the young researchers in the region.
Rumen Radev congratulated Montenegro on its NATO accession and voiced Bulgaria’s readiness to share the experience and good practices it has of its membership in the Alliance. During the talks held with the Bulgarian Head of State, Filip Vujanovic showed interest in the training and qualification of Montenegrin staff in the sphere of security and defense at Bulgarian high military schools and academies.
President Filip Vujanovic, for his part, voiced gratitude for Bulgaria’s consistent support for Montenegro’s dialogue with the European institutions. “Bulgaria’s role of an intermediary brought important messages from the EU to the Western Balkan region – through the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU, we were assured that the prospects for EU accession are real, that Brexit will not slow down the rate of the candidate-countries’ integration and that the vital European help for the development of the region will be preserved,” the Montenegrin Head of State said. President Vujanovic also highly appreciated our country’s intention to host a summit of the EU state and government leaders and those of the Western Balkans during Bulgaria’s Presidency, at which the road map for the region’s future integration will be formulated.