16.04.2018
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Kosovo President Hashim Thaci expressed the common opinion that the country's path to Europe is the only one possible and it is synonymous with peace and stability. At a joint press conference in Pristina, where the Bulgarian Prime Minister is on a visit, the two said that increasing investment in the region and developing transport and digital infrastructure means better and more decent living standards, more peace, and better prospects.
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov added that for its 10 years of independence, Kosovo has made visible progress and is on the right track. However, he highlighted the need to resolve bilateral issues before talking about effective membership in the European Union. “When I have meetings with leaders from the Balkan region, I always call for understanding, to assure the EU that it will accept countries without problems, whose political elites can thus lead their peoples to peace. Then the EU will look at us with different eyes,” Borissov said. He expressed the expectation that Pristina and Belgrade, Athens and Skopje will continue their respective dialogues to find a way forward to the EU and NATO. “You have considerable political weight, I rely on you. Everything else I would not even call an alternative, because an alternative is when you have something to choose from, and the previous alternative we saw what it amounts to - the paramilitary formations, I do not even want to look back to this period, which would drag everyone backwards,” the Bulgarian Prime Minister pointed out. He again called for selfishness on the Balkans to be forgotten, because, even when it appears in just one country, it would cause cataclysms in all the others.
The path to Europe is the only way for Kosovo, President Thaci said, and thanked Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Prime Minister Borissov for putting the Western Balkans at the focus of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. He underlined that his country will continue the dialogue with Serbia and will go the whole way to “a real peace process in the region.”
Borissov and Thaci stressed on the importance of the Summit in Sofia in May and the serious political and technical preparations for it. “This topic was impossible to be raised a year ago, we are now in an advanced dialogue,” Borissov said, pointing out that the construction of the infrastructure, for which funding is already provided, can start immediately.
