European perspective of Western Balkans remains in the focus of the EU.

The European perspective of the Western Balkans remains in the focus of the European Union, it was stressed on Friday, at the end of a two-day conference of EU MPs on the common foreign and security policy.

The EU MPs agreed that the significance of the integration of the candidate countries of Southeast Europe into the EU is crucial for the stability of the region and Europe as a whole.

Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karin Kneissl, as well as the Executive Director for Europe and Central Asia of the European External Affairs Service, Thomas Mayr-Harting, said there is a new dynamic in the accession process and it needs to be used.

Kneissl stressed that the Western Balkans is a part of Europe and should therefore be referred as Southeast Europe, Al Jazeera reports.

She underlined that the EU could not be complete without the integration of the region, pointing out that history has shown that the future of Southeast Europe must be in the EU.

Kneissl concluded that the region is still ruled by the concept that ethnicity comes before anything else, and that now it is important to establish meritocracy.

According to Kneissl, the existing dynamic should be used, because the accession process in Southeast Europe needs an urgent positive momentum and the key to this lies in politics.

She pointed out that the countries of the region have been invited to use the open arms of Europe and implement regional reconciliation...