Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bisera Turkovic participated, in Brdo near Kranj, in an informal meeting of ministers of foreign and European countries of the Western Balkans and the European Union.
The EU foreign and European ministers, as well as the countries of the region, discussed the ongoing issues, including the consequences and resilience against the pandemic and the priorities of Slovenia’s EU presidency.
Before the beginning of the session, Minister Turkovic emphasized that the enlargement of the European Union must remain at the top of priorities.
In her address, the Minister said that the whole world is aware of the negative consequences of the pandemic in the past 18 months, which affected the regional economy, but at the same time affected all countries individually.
She pointed out that in the future work and planning of economic policies it is necessary to take into account ideas that include stronger regional cooperation in the Western Balkans and joint appearance on foreign markets, which are recovering quickly.
She also stressed the importance of directing tax revenues towards new employment and supporting employment projects, environmental projects and the health sector.
“In conclusion, I believe that resilience is one of the most important political goals of our post-pandemic recovery. We simply cannot leave our companies to fight for their own survival and we should make more efforts to maintain support for economic reforms. The current World Bank projection is 4.4 percent growth in the Western Balkans (2021). In the light of economic safety measures, I think we should reduce excessive dependence on foreign markets,” said Minister Turković.
