14 May - Sami Frasheri school in Pristina
“When will Kosovo
join the EU?”
A difficult question to start the “EU teach a day” programme by a
pupil of the Sami Frasheri school in Pristina. Alison Weston, the
chief of staff of the EU Special Representative office, gave the
first lecture in the course of the programme that will continue
until the end of this school year and give children at schools all
over Kosovo the possibility to learn more about the EU and to
discuss Kosovo’s European future.
Alison Weston, EUSR Chief of Staff together with the Deputy Minister
for Education Agim Hyseni marked the first lecture of the programme
stressing that the European perspective of Kosovo is largely in the
hands of the young people in Kosovo. Agim Hyseni: “Kosovo’s people
in Europe and the young generation in Kosovo are the guarantee for
achieving EU integration.” Alison Weston started her lecture by
explaining what Europe Day stands for and that we are actually
remembering the day of the historic speech of the French Foreign
Minister Robert Schuman in 1950 when he proposed that France and
Germany should work together to make sure that war between the two
countries will be impossible. “The EU is a great idea, thanks to
this idea we have now over 60 years of peace and stability in
Europe, leaving behind terrible things that happened in the past. To
make the EU work is not easy as all EU countries have different
histories, traditions, languages and cultures and it takes a lot of
time and commitment to overcome the differences and to find a common
way forward. But the remarkable story is that the EU managed to do
this again and again over many years”.
To some of the questions there is no final answer though, just like
to the one when Kosovo will join the EU. In that case the answer was
that there is no concrete date as EU accession of Kosovo depends on
too many factors. It was though possible identifying the most
important factor of them all and that is how fast Kosovo manages to
work through the challenging reform agenda. So in the end it will
depend largely on the Kosovars themselves how fast they will enter
into the EU.