TIRANA (Albania), July 10 (SeeNews) – The European Commission said on Tuesday it will launch a new guarantee instrument for the Western Balkans early next year with an initial fund of 150 million euro ($176 million) for the 2019-2020 period.
“The guarantee will aim to leverage up to 1 billion euro in investments into sustainable socio-economic development and regional integration,” the Commission said in a statement on occasion of the London summit on the Western Balkans taking place on July 9-10.
“The guarantee will allow sharing financial risk to unlock private investment in a broad range of sectors such as start-ups and SMEs, climate finance and infrastructure investments, as well as digital and social sectors, thus tackling key bottlenecks hampering access to finance in the region,” the EU's executive body said.
Representing the EU at the summit, the bloc's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the Western Balkans region is steadily moving forward.
“In these years we have been all working together to draw the region closer and closer to the European Union, politically, economically and security-wise. And we have seen remarkable results, solutions to the most difficult bilateral issues,” Mogherini said.
The new guarantee instrument aims to support socioeconomic development in the Western Balkan countries - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia – with a focus on further implementation of the action plan to establish a regional economic area as agreed in Trieste last year, support the digital agenda for the Western Balkans adopted in June in Sofia, and consider ways to step up financing for SMEs and start-ups.
Heads of government, foreign ministers and ministers of the interior from the Western Balkans together with their counterparts from several EU member states and high-level EU representatives are meeting in London to continue strengthening regional cooperation between the six partners of the Western Balkans, as well as between the region and the EU, to further advance the European integration of the region.
The London summit is part of the Berlin process, an initiative from several EU member states aimed at supporting efforts towards strengthening regional cooperation and the European integration of the Western Balkans.
($ = 0.85032 euro)