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The long-running debate in Albania over whether the Open Balkans initiative was an idea from Belgrade, primarily helping Serbia, and even isolating Kosovo, has finally been answered by President Vučić himself. He has publicly stated that it was his idea, which was later embraced by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.
"The Open Balkans was my idea, but it was cut short because some major European powers didn't have the 'wheel in their hands,'" he said in an interview with Alistair Campbell, on "The Rest is Politics," on the Apple platform.
This very statement by the Serbian president has been singled out as the main headline in the country's media.
But, on the other hand, for years, before being ordered by Washington to withdraw from this initiative in July 2023, Edi Rama never admitted that this idea originated in Belgrade.
While Albin Kurti condemned this initiative, insisting that the region’s goals were “best achieved in the Regional Common Market, where we operate with EU rules and values and where we work to ensure fair treatment mechanisms that benefit all our citizens equally,” Rama scorned this approach. He replied to his Kosovar counterpart: “The Open Balkans neither stops nor closes. Whoever opposes it is destined to be disappointed. Whoever hesitates is destined to waste time.”
Rama even asked European leaders that, in the absence of integrating the Balkan countries into the EU, they should support Open Balkans.
"If the Western Balkans can't come to the EU, maybe the EU can come to the Western Balkans," he wrote in a eponymous article in Politico, repeating the same thesis he put forward during a summit in Brno, Slovenia, between the EU and the countries of the region, in October 2021. And for all this he received Vučić's thanks several times: "without Rama's determination and persistence, the 'Open Balkans' would have been impossible."
A few months after the Brno Summit, alongside his two Macedonian and Serbian partners, he threatened to boycott the joint summit with the EU, raising the question: “What should we do there?” But when they finally went “there,” Rama almost threatened European countries: “If you don’t want our region to be destroyed, support the Open Balkans.” He mentioned in his speech to European leaders terms such as war, conflict, bloodshed, while on the same date, June 24, 2022, Vučić told the same audience: “we don’t want our region to end up like Ukraine,” offering an Open Balkan as an alternative.
One of the arguments that Edi Rama gave to continue his adventure with Vučić to advance the "Open Balkans" was that this initiative was supported by 59% of Albanians. In April 2022, the prime minister held the so-called National Consultation, where out of over 500 thousand people surveyed, it turned out that the majority were in favor of a region with free movement of people, goods and ideas. Even a few days after announcing these results publicly, Rama went on an official visit to Berlin and said alongside Chancellor Sholtz that despite Germany asking him to focus on the Berlin process, he had the mandate of the Albanians to advance the Serbian idea.
However, over time, some secrets began to emerge. The fact that we were dealing with a Serbian idea was initially acknowledged by Moscow through its foreign minister in June 2022. The head of the conservative diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, had openly stated that the open Balkans is a Serbian initiative and that unlike Brussels, which wants a closed peninsula, Moscow supports it as such.
Later, as Open Balkans was dying, voices were heard denouncing its evil project. In September 2024, Germany’s envoy for the Western Balkans, Manuel Sarrazin, made a very strong statement on Pristina’s RTK television, claiming that the Open Balkans initiative was conceived as an act against Kosovo. “The Open Balkans was created to bypass Kosovo,” he said in a straightforward speech.
And now, when this dangerous adventure is over and it is only worth historians to document who was right and who was a hypocrite, it is the Serbian president himself who has dotted the "I". He has admitted that the initiative was his, leaving Edi Rama only the stain of a pathetic defender of an idea that in the end he was forced to abandon with his tail in the saddle./ Lapsi.al
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