Macron urges EU to invest more in Balkans, praises Serbian President Vucic for doing great job

Macron said this at a panel moderated by German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, while saying that membership talks should not be the only EU policy towards the Balkans and that this was not necessarily the best way to boost European influence in the region

Serbia has been conducting EU membership negotiations for five years, however, investments that are visible in the country are not European but Chinese and Russian, French President Emmanuel Macron said at the Munich Security Conference and praised Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for doing his job excellently.

Macron said this at a panel moderated by German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, while saying that membership talks should not be the only EU policy towards the Balkans and that this was not necessarily the best way to boost European influence in the region.

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Macron said he supported the strategic goal of keeping the Western Balkan countries firmly in Europe, but asked if the current methodology was a good way to achieve that goal.

"I have great respect for the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, he is doing a great job, he is a great leader, but what is happening there is determined by Russia and China, not by Europe," said Macron.

He recalled that Serbia has been opening negotiation chapters for five years and warned that in a couple of years "people will say that it's time for Serbia to join the EU, because it's already beginning to lose patience, and rightly so."

The French president said that the EU must invest much more than it has so far in infrastructure, culture, knowledge of languages if it wants to include the Balkans in Europe, and stressed that France is already changing its policy in this direction.

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(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)