Kosovo will apply for EU membership this week
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti announced that they will apply for membership to the European Union (EU) this week.
Kurti made statements at the cabinet meeting held in the capital Pristina. Reminding that they announced that they would apply for EU membership one year ago, Prime Minister Kurti stated that the application will be made this week on the occasion of the meeting.
“The EU is a house of peace and this is the house to which our country naturally belongs,” Kurti said. Stating that Kosovo's application would be a response to the EU summit held in Thessaloniki in 2003, Kurti said that it "responded" to the invitation at the last summit held in Tirana, the capital of Albania. “A week ago, in a joint statement in Tirana, the EU called for speeding up the accession process.
In this context, the application is a response to the EU's promise of membership to the region at the 2003 summit and a direct response to the invitation at the Tirana summit. Emphasizing that Kosovo was in a better position than many countries that applied for membership to the EU before, Kurti said, "As a peaceful and democratic country, the place where Kosovo should naturally be is the EU."
