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In front of numerous students and scholars of the SEEU, EU Ambassador Orav explained about the common future and correlation between the EU and the Western Balkans countries.
"The EU will continue with the process of enlargement. All the Western Balkans countries need the EU. And, the EU needs all of you with strong democracy and strong economy"Orav underlined.
While explaining the importance of democracy during the process of integration, he stated, "Why countries want to become part of the EU? Because of three elements: peace, democracy and prosperity. And all that together would be the best solution, of course."
Speaking about the future of the EU, Ambassador Aivo Orav, amongst other, said that the new diplomatic service of the EU was created with the Lisbon Treaty. And, the idea of this EU foreign policy service is to have a coordinated foreign policy and the EU speaking with one voice.
"Today there are new challenges in the field of security. But, we should not forget that we have heard the same stories, guessing the future of the EU when the economic crisis occurred few years ago, e.g. there were many rumors that the Euro would disappear allegedly after the economic crisis and that the entire economy would collapse. But, at the end, it didn’t happen. The solidarity element showed that we are stronger than ever! The economic crisis was overcome,"Orav said.
According to Ambassador Orav it is the same with other challenges in terms of the future but in 'The solidarity element brings us, the 28 member-states together, and helps us overcome all difficulties after which we come out stronger,' he noted at the latest edition of the Diplomatic Lectures Series.
In his introductory speech the Director of the SEEU’s Scientific Institute “Max van der Stoel”, Prof. Dr. Veton Latifi recalled that regardless whether the EU from time to time may have some skeptical moments toward the enlargement, however the European values of the aspiring countries should be showed in practice by their patience and by following the real directions of guiding criteria and showing that these aspiring countries will not be extracting problems to the Union, but rather an additional strengthening of the European values, solidarity and democracy. According to him it is not enough to speak about the EU, but rather it requires much more to work on European values and to show how they look like in practice and live with these values.