Croatia will do all it can to help its southeast neighbours and the investment community needs to utilise this opportunity to the benefit of those countries and for the benefit of the entire European Union, said Plenkovic at the event organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The summit meeting was opened by EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti and Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenkovic, in his current position as holder of the European Union presidency.
This is the fourth EBRD summit of its kind; the inaugural Western Balkans Summit took place at the EBRD in February 2014 and, for the first time, brought together all the region’s six prime minister: Dusko Markovic of Montenegro, Edi Rama of Albania, Oliver Spasovski of North Macedonia, Zoran Tegeltija of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albin Kurti of Kosovo and Ana Brnabic of Serbia.
We are a country that is the most familiar with that region and which is offering support to those countries so that their path to the European Union can be accelerated. That is one of the key priorities, Plenkovic said.
He added that as the presiding country of the EU,Croatia had already achieved success in putting the topic of EU enlargement high on the agenda. That has motivated some other member states to organise high-level meetings ahead of the Zagreb summit in May on the topic of enlargement to the Western Balkans, he added.
As the leading investor in the region we are looking forward to this fourth edition of EBRD's Western Balkan investment summit which is a priority for the EBRD. Our aim is to unlock the potential of that region supporting a greater economic growth and its regional and European integration, Charkrbarti said. He announced that six new projects would be signed for the Western Balkans.
The EBRD has invested to date 13 billion in the Western Balkan countries.