The six West Balkan states attended a summit in Berlin to sign agreements to bring them closer to EU membership. The German Chancellor said they needed to cooperate.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen welcomed the six West Balkan states to Berlin on Monday as part of the tenth Berlin Process summit.
The Berlin process aims to bring Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Albania and North Macedonia together to sign agreements to enable them to become EU member states. Five out of six agreements were signed, and restrictions on export from Serbia to Kosovo were lifted.
Scholz underlined that the states could only join by working together, despite some of them likely to meet conditions quicker than others. He encouraged the states to help each other out.
"We want to develop a common perspective for everyone. But there will be countries that will finish very quickly - that is foreseeable - and meet all the conditions; we will not stop them. I don't think that is anyone's view of things. But everyone must know that they will share a common future and that they cannot block each other, but that ultimately it is only through what they do that they can create the space to join," he told a press conference in Berlin on Monday.
Montenegro is seen as the first promising country to be integrated to Europe, despite the process beginning more than 20 years ago. Whilst Montenegro expects to meet all the requirements before 2028, Scholz said he hopes the whole process would be complete within the next 10 years, and that all the countries would have joined by then.
The German leader also urged Serbia and Kosovo to thaw relations.
Croatia was the last state to become part of the EU, back in 2013.
But with Ukraine and Moldova's memberships being accelerated due to the full-scale invasion, its likely to leave a sour taste in the Balkan states' mouths.