Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi says that the European Union must expand with the integration of the Western Balkans if it wants to overcome the strong political crisis that Europe has been going through for years.
According to him, the European Union should include the Western Balkans together with Albania to establish once and for all the final borders of this region with Europe.

“I would end it with the enlargement, with Albania and with all the countries of the former Yugoslavia, thus setting the final borders of Europe. The end of the expansion is in fact the element that would force us to change the functioning of our institutions, which we need so much,” Prodi told Italian media.

Speaking in an interview with “Sette”, the first president of the European Commission also recounted the steps that the European Union must take during 2022 to get out of the crisis that has currently gripped it.

“Europe is so necessary, but it is moving so slowly that we must hope that everything will end for our grandchildren,” the former Democratic Party leader explained in the presentation of his latest book, “Images That Show Europe.”

Prodi, who is increasingly distant from active Italian politics, after constantly denying his return, is increasingly passionate and closer to foreign policy. Prodi explains why Europe has long been no longer at the center of the world.

According to him, without a real and common foreign policy, even defense becomes useless: from Iraq onwards, Prodi denounces, “Europe has not had time to unite in terms of foreign policy. It has always been incapable of acting because of the unanimous vote.”

According to Prodi, the UK’s exit from the Union allowed Europe to put its hand in the middle of the Covid pandemic and undertake a grand solidarity plan.

“Germany has realized that without Europe nothing is worth it. Therefore, France, Italy and Spain, together with Germany, must form a strong nucleus of countries capable of advancing the European Union process. And many other countries will join immediately,” said Prodi.

He also makes a second proposal. According to him, it is the process of further enlargement of the European Union cordon, as was done at that time by Prodi himself.

As for Eastern Europe, in the case of Poland and Hungary Prodi emphasizes that they are problems related to the past and no longer exist today. “I was president of the European Commission with 15 and 25 seats and there was no change: The point was that I was always dealing with the divergent vision of the UK. And Great Britain is not a country of the East,” Romano Prodi commented on “Sette”.

/Klara Ruci/