The European Commission will recommend the start of the accession negotiations with Macedonia and Albania, in support of the EU’s expansion towards the Western Balkans, said the EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn for the German newspaper “Die Welt.”
-The European Commission will very soon, most probably by the end of the summer, recommend that the countries members start accession talks with Albania and the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. We believe that these two countries have made significant reforms and that is why they are qualified for this step forward – said Hahn.
He states that Macedonia is a candidate since 2005 and it has made an effort to solve the name dispute with the neighboring Greece that dates since the country’s claim to independence in 1991.
Hahn stresses the statement given yesterday by the German chancellor Angela Merkel after the meeting with the Macedonian Prime MInister Zoran Zaev that the solution of this dispute “has never been so close to resolve.”
Albania, is a candidate for an EU membership since 2014 and according to Hahn it “has done a lot in order to fight organized crime.”
