Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, said in an interview with “360 Degrees” that in the last EU meetings there was “growing frustration with the fact that no progress can be made towards opening negotiations with Albania and Macedonia”.

You are absolutely right that there was a time when there was a sense of enlargement fatigue, certain capitals hesitated, but I believe the tide is changing. My view is, and I have a feeling that more and more members are doing that, that there is no vacuum in politics and if we Europeans, as the EU, and there is a big difference, turn our backs, then others will rush in – whether it be China, Russia or Turkey. And this is a European region, it is not our interest and hence, in a geopolitical sense, it is a question of whether our way of life or the way of life of someone else will be imposed here. I believe that this is a thinking that is of growing interest in the EU and at the last EU meetings, in the Council, there was growing frustration with the fact that no progress can be made towards opening negotiations with Albania and Macedonia because, frankly, your country did everything it had to do and it deserves it. I would say that Bulgaria is isolated in these talks, Schallenberg said.