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Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The Prime Minister claims that the initiative was attacked only because it bore his and Aleksandar Vučić's names. However, the facts show that the "Open Balkans" was not brought down by prejudice, but by a lack of trust in the region, political isolation and the return of the European Union as the main actor in the Balkans.
Edi Rama does not give up defending one of the most controversial projects of his political career. In an interview with Euronews Serbia, the Albanian Prime Minister stated that the “Open Balkans” was considered “a terrible idea” only because it was promoted by him and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
" It was a terrible idea for the sole reason that Vučić and I were behind it. If we removed our names and replaced them with five others, it would be considered a great idea ," Rama said, adding that this is how politics works in the Balkans.
But, despite Rama's attempt to present the failure of the "Open Balkans" as a result of political prejudice, the course of events in the region shows a completely different reality.
The initiative, originally known as “Mini Schengen,” was born in 2019 as a joint project between Albania, Serbia, and North Macedonia. It was presented as a regional alternative at a time when the European Union’s enlargement process had slowed and Western Balkan countries were losing faith in Brussels’ promises.
Rama and Vučić promoted the “Open Balkans” as an indigenous project, which would demonstrate that the region was capable of building its own mechanisms of economic and political cooperation, without expecting everything from the European Union. The objective was to create a common market, with the free movement of goods, services, capital and people, according to the European model.
However, the project never managed to become a comprehensive initiative. Kosovo refused to accept it, considering it unacceptable to participate in a project with Serbia without mutual recognition. Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina also chose not to join, supporting the Berlin Process as the official mechanism for regional cooperation.
In practice, the “Open Balkans” remained a project of three leaders, rather than a project of the six Western Balkan countries. It was precisely this political isolation that was one of the main reasons that the initiative lost momentum and failed to produce the impact it promised.
The final blow came with the change in geopolitical reality following the Russian aggression in Ukraine. The European Union changed course, returned enlargement to the center of its policy and intensified its commitment to the Western Balkans. The Berlin Process regained the weight it had lost, while the “Open Balkans” remained in the background.
Today, most regional projects are developed under the umbrella of the Berlin Process and the European Union's Growth Plan, while the initiative that Rama still considers a good idea practically no longer has a role in the region's political architecture.
For this reason, the Prime Minister's claim that the "Open Balkans" failed only because of his and Vučić's names is not supported by the developments of recent years. The project was not only defeated by political opponents, but also by the lack of trust of the countries of the region, the rejection of Kosovo, the reserved stance of Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the return of the European Union as the main promoter of regional integration.
The irony is that Rama himself, who for years presented the “Open Balkans” as the future of the Western Balkans, today sees it replaced by the very Berlin Process, the mechanism he once considered insufficient. While the prime minister continues to defend the project as a misunderstood idea, the political reality in the region shows that the “Open Balkans” experiment is now a thing of the past. / Pamphlet
Mund te themi lirshem se ideja e rames ishte thjesht nje zhgaravine per propagande
Rama eshte shkja antishqiptar. Donte ta fuste Shqiperine nen JugoSerbosllavi. Tani qe nuk ja arriti, po copton vendin. Shëorreni kete monster te Shurrelit!
Krimineli drogaxhi, po siguron drogat permes satelite qe i bleu per kete.