FM Mogherini: Western Balkans - strategic priority of Italy's EU Presidency

Sarajevo, 24 July 2014 (MIA) - Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said in Sarajevo on Thursday that her country, which chairs the European Union in the second half of the year, would pay special attention to the Western Balkans, Hina news agency reports.

The Western Balkans is a strategic priority of our presidency because the EU will have to show additional effort in helping potential member states, she said at the start of a tour of Western Balkan countries.

Mogherini said she did not choose Sarajevo as the first stop by accident because Bosnia/Herzegovina, owing to its problems and European prospects, deserved special attention.

Addressing a forum on reforms that need to be taken to stabilise the economic and social situation in Bosnia, she recalled that the new Italian government too had launched painful but necessary structural reforms. Mogherini said other EU member states would have to do the same, as would those which planned to join the EU.

She said economic growth was a challenge for the whole of Europe and that Europe needed a deep institutional reconstruction.

"The last European Parliament elections showed that citizens seek radical change and that they wanted an EU which will work to their benefit and be less bureaucratic," she added.

Mogherini said that despite the current difficulties, the EU still offered possibilities for development, stability, peace and coexistence, voicing confidence that the people in Bosnia wanted just that. For that to happen, however, the country must undergo radical reforms, primarily in economic development and social stability, she added.