Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council, Goran Svilanovic, in an opinion piece for the paper observes that regional infrastructure and economy are not interlinked as much as they should be and that this has to change.
He recalls that in September of 2013, representatives of Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Croatia adopted a comprehensive strategy prepared by the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) titled South East Europe 2020 aimed at improving living conditions for the citizens of the countries involved and take them out of the crisis.
“In reality, this means opening of 1 million new jobs over the next seven years, increase of energy efficiency by 9 percent and of government productivity by 20 percent, doubling of trade and investments, and finally increase of revenues by one-third”.
Economic criteria for EU membership remain very clear, adds Svilanovic, and the EU will not admit new members to the bloc if their economy is weaker than that of any EU member state. The only way to achieve this is through implementation of the SEE 2020 strategy, he stresses.
Svilanovic, former foreign minister of former Yugoslavia, further notes that in the coming years the main task of the RCC will be to ensure implementation of the SEE 2020 and explains that there is already an operational and action plan in place to make this happen.
