The former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Macedonia, Nikola Dimitrov, said today at the 22nd Belgrade Economic Forum that the region must be given a tangible prospect for EU membership, MIA’s correspondent in Belgrade reported.

At a panel on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the Western Balkans, he warned that during the crisis the economic gap between the EU member states and the Western Balkan countries is increasing, as the region is more vulnerable than the rest of the continent because there are more people living under the poverty line.

He added that this will lead to dissatisfaction of the citizens in the region with the European integration and assessed that the next year will be extremely difficult.

We are all in the European economic ship because most of the investments come from the EU member states, but the economic difference is increasing, because the foreign trade deficit of the region is about nine billion euros, and the region receives the same amounts from the EU, but for a period of seven years. Greece receives ten times more than the countries of the Western Balkans, and therefore the difference is increasing, said Dimitrov, speaking at the meeting organized by the Delphi Economic Forum.

He assessed that the EU has not done anything tangible since the admission of Croatia in 2013 and emphasized that the war in Ukraine shows that, if the EU wants to have a role and weight in the emerging new world, this region must become part of it.