"Western Balkan countries are further away from EU membership today than they had been in 2014," President of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, said after a working dinner given for the Western Balkans leaders by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, on Tuesday evening.

Speaking to the press in Brussels, Djukanovic said that his assessment was not due to “the poor reform capacity of the Western Balkans countries.”

“This pessimistic assessment was generated, first and foremost, by the lack of commitment on both sides to achieving the common goal, and our common goal is for the Western Balkan countries to become members of the European Union,” Djukanovic said.

He said that the Western Balkan countries should know whether their prospects of joining the EU in the foreseeable future were realistic and that this should be made clear. He recalled several optimistic statements about EU enlargement made at the start of the term of the present European Commission, while at the same time they were contradicted by statements coming from Brussels and other European capitals.

“Today we still do not have a clear picture of our relationships, and that was my main message,” Djukanovic said and added: “This is possibly the last moment for us to make our relationships clearer. We need to know whether the membership prospects of the Western Balkan countries are indeed realistic in the foreseeable future and we need to define a clear time frame.”

Djukanovic said that all the participants at the dinner supported this approach. The dinner was also attended by the prime ministers of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia.