After the preceding summits in Berlin (2014) and Vienna (2015), this year the annual Western Balkans Summit was held in France for the first time. The aim of the meeting, chaired by President Francois Hollande, was to \u201caccompany the efforts\u201d of the region in its process of \u201crapprochement\u201d to the European Union by reinforcing \u201cconcrete initiatives\u201d of regional cooperation. The summit was hosted at the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace and was attended by 12 Countries \u2013 6 Balkan Countries and 6 EU Member States \u2013 including Italy, with Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, in addition to Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and important international financial institutions like the EBRD and the EIB. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u201cconcrete initiatives\u201d include developing transport and energy infrastructures, boosting trade and youth mobility between the Balkans and the EU. The Summit took stock of the European perspectives, especially in consideration of the current migration crisis and the fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n
On the sidelines of the event, Minister Gentiloni announced that the next Western Balkans Summit will be held in Italy in the summer of 2017.<\/p>\n
Talking to the press on the sidelines of the Summit, the Italian Foreign Minister said: \u201cWe will persist with the commitments we are working on and we will add typically Italian elements like the cultural dimension on the one hand and, on the economic front, cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises which are very numerous in the Western Balkans region.\u201d Mr Gentiloni continued: \u201cWe are the Western Balkans\u2019 second-largest trade partner after Germany, with trade volumes for over 20 billion euros. Therefore improving relations with the Western Balkans is not only a geopolitical and strategic interest of Italy, connected to the immigration crisis and the fight against terrorism, but it also represents a huge economic interest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the preceding summits in Berlin (2014) and Vienna (2015), this year the annual Western Balkans Summit was held in France for the first time. The aim of the meeting, chaired by President Francois Hollande, was to \u201caccompany the efforts\u201d of the region in its process of \u201crapprochement\u201d to the European Union by reinforcing \u201cconcrete […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,9,76],"class_list":["post-53029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-approfondimenti","tag-diplomazia-economica","tag-europa","tag-ministri-precedenti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esteri.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}