Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania will be bound by a joint agreement on joint efforts to combat tax evasion in the three countries. This is stated in the text of the Memorandum of Understanding, to which Radio Free Europe had access and which the representatives of the three countries must sign in the Macedonian city of Ohrid, at the meeting of the “Open Balkans” initiative, scheduled for Wednesday, on June 8th.

In addition, an agreement on the recognition of higher education diplomas will be signed in Ohrid, as well as memoranda on cultural cooperation in the field of tourism. None of the four planned documents mentions enlargement, but invites other interested states to cooperate in the future.

The representative of Montenegro, Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic will also attend the Ohrid summit for the first time. He has been criticized by part of the public in his country because he does not rule out the possibility of Montenegro’s membership in the “Open Balkans”, an initiative launched in 2019, which to date, despite having the support of the EU, as well as of the previous and current US administrations, failed to expand. The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, has rejected the invitation of the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Dimitar Kovacevski, to participate in the Open Balkans Initiative.

The three initiators, Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania, Aleksandar Vucic, the President of Serbia, and Zoran Zaev, the former Prime Minister of North Macedonia conceived this concept in order to create an area of ​​free movement of people, goods and services in Western Balkans.

/Klara Ruci/