Government: Balkan states should be helped to become members of the EU

The Balkans are likely to present “the next big opportunity” for the European Union, and the region could become the bloc’s next economic motor, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday, addressing the Conference of Speakers of Parliaments of the Visegrád Group and south-eastern Europe. The V4 and Balkan countries may end up building together the most significant economic area of the entire European continent, he said.

“If the Balkan nations get an opportunity, just as the Visegrád countries did, they will pick up speed within a few years, strengthen their economies and real growth, and economic progress will come to the EU from the Balkans,” he said.

The EU membership of Balkan countries is even more in the interest of the EU

than the other way round, not only from the point of security but also in terms of Western economic interests, he added.

“If they are unable to channel the Balkans’ vitality and endeavours into EU economy, they will miss a great opportunity,” he said, and encouraged the Balkan countries to present their demands for EU membership with “the utmost self-confidence”. Orbán said that had the predecessors of current western leaders not taken the step for enlargement, the EU would be much weaker today. Because, he added, that extra growth and performance currently came from central Europe.

If central European countries were not members of the EU today, living standards in the west would be much lower than they are, Orbán said. Combined trade between the Visegrád Group countries and Germany is double that of France-Germany and three times trade between Italy and Germany, he added. “It is not an exaggeration to say that the Germany economy would collapse without central Europe,” he said.

Orbán said the path to the EU for the peoples of the Balkans led through central Europe.

The countries of the Balkans should not be made into a buffer zone but should instead be integrated into the bloc,

he added. No matter how strongly the commissioner in charge of enlargement works on this, the real integration of the Balkans requires political and strategic decisions that are made not by the commisioners, and not even the European Commission, but the European Council made up of the prime ministers and presidents of European countries, Orbán said.

“As long as they do not decide to integrate the Balkans, we will be part of a continually extending process where we get lost in detail, with regulatory issues in focus instead of strategic matters; and actually it is all about playing for time,” he added.