EU seeking ways to speed up Western Balkans membership

Key points

• European Council President Antonio Costa said new ways need to be found to speed up Western Balkans membership in the EU.
• His comments come ahead of an upcoming summit in Montenegro.
• The European Union needs to find ways of speeding up the membership process for six Western Balkan candidate countries, European Council President Antonio Costa said on Thursday.
• "For us, the enlargement, namely to the Western Balkans, is the most important geopolitical investment that the European Union is doing," Costa said during a joint press briefing with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade.
• Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro have been seeking to join the bloc for some time now but have yet to complete the stringent process.