Though it’s on the margins, enlargement is obviously not in the focus of EU leaders, Kanal 5 said in its Thursday coverage of the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Copenhagen. Support for Ukraine, the security situation in Europe, and the current geopolitical reality are the main topics in the Danish capital.
Only European Council President Antonio Costa raised the enlargement matter, that is, at the leaders’ dinner, he raised the topic of changing EU rules to allow formal accession talks to begin following approval by a qualified majority of leaders, rather than by unanimous consent as is currently required.
However, POLITICO, citing diplomatic sources, has reported that that was rejected primarily by Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, who received support from several other EU members.
In Copenhagen, North Macedonia is being represented by President Gordana Siljanovska Davkova. Before the summit, she said what was needed was politics as the art of the possible.
“May I say something coming from a small country? We need politics as the art of possible instead of politics we are living with, in which the question is who, when, and how wins. We need more Kantianism than Machiavellianism”, the President stated.
The same day, at a panel discussion “Security and Resilience – Traditional and New Threats” in the frames of the summit, regarding the war in Ukraine, Middle East conflict, and transnational threats, she stated that her country invested efforts to act constructively.
At the same time, Siljanovska Davkova stressed that the European continent was not safe as long as Western Balkan countries were outside the EU. In that regard, she again said the region’s integration had to be founded exclusively on the Copenhagen criteria.
The President also attended the event organised by French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni on the occasion of the presentation of France’s initiative to form a European coalition against drug trafficking.
During the discussion, she said the unity of cartels should be met with more firm unity and cooperation of European countries. That is possible, Siljanovska Davkova pointed out, only through EU integration of the Western Balkans.