Speech by Ambassador Milorad Šćepanović, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro, CEI Ministerial Meeting,Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, 27 November 2008

Published date: 27.11.2008 13:31 | Author: Naslovna strana

Print

Speech by
Ambassador Milorad Šćepanović,
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro,
CEI Ministerial Meeting,
Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, 27 November 2008



Dear Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova - Mr. Stratan,

Dear Ministers,
Your Excellences,
Ladies and Gentlemen:


Id like to start by expressing my appreciation to our kind Moldovan hosts, for investing so much effort and dedication in implementing the CEI agenda, and especially in doing their best to make this Meeting and the Summit of CEI Heads of State, a success.
I would also like to thank the CEI Executive Secretariat, its Secretary General and its staff, for excellent work done in this year.

As the oldest regional initiative in this part of Europe, CEI has shown significant flexibility and capacity to reinvent itself in changing circumstances and in changing times. Today, half of it Members are Members of the European Union, while others are striving to either become full-fledged Members, or establish a different, but nevertheless close, form of association.
In all of this, we are united together by common desire for peace, stability and prosperity of our region.
Montenegro has recognized the importance of European and Euro-Atlantic integration, as a road to achieving these goals. We have recently submitted our candidature for the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), and, with significant progress achieved in the past year since signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU, we are confident that the time is ripe for taking another step forward in our European integration process. In this sense, we count on the CEI EU Member States to support Montenegros application for obtaining the Candidate Status, thus acknowledging the constructive and positive role of Montenegro in the region, and sending a clear signal to the rest of the region that the doors of the EU are truly open for all the countries which genuinely strive to fulfill the European democratic, political, economic, and overall standards. In this sense, as we continue to conduct open dialogue with the EU as a whole and its institutions, we persist on our path of implementing reforms and attaining higer EU standards.

As we all know, the Central-European Initiative is undergoing a structural change, a repositioning process, as part of its strategy to better adapt itself to the new realities and needs in the South Eastern Europe region. To a great extent, this process is aimed at focusing our attention and our energies, and allocating our resources at implementing projects of true importance and joint interest for CEI Member Countries. In this sense, Montenegro supports the agreed augmentation of the annual contributions by Member States to CEI Co-operation Fund in 2009, and hopes that a sustainable financial mechanism will be found for ensuring the continuation of contributions beyond 2009.
While also supporting the jointly agreed mechanism of networks of focal points, we would also like to see more concrete results from this mechanism, particularly in terms of its enabling efficient coordination between focal points, CEI Secretariat and national coordinators, which will allow us to properly evaluate its merits.

Our initiative is also taking important steps in creating closer links and true co-operation with other regional bodies, such as South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) and Regional Co-operation Council (RCC), Adriatic-Ionian Initiative (AII) and Organization of the Black Sea Economic Co-operation (BSEC), and other, which we commend and fully support.
We believe that recent membership of Montenegro, together with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia, in the Union for the Mediterranean, which represents an important dimension of the EU foreign policy, will represents an added value even to Central-European Initiative, of which thirteen Members are also Members of this Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. Directed towards project-oriented cooperation, in areas many of which are in common with CEI, this EU Initiative provides a good framework for establishing closer ties between CEI as a whole and this European Unions common foreign policy mechanism.

In the end, I would like to wish our Romanian colleagues and friends a very successful upcoming Presidency, and as a country which will take over CEI Presidency in 2010, Montenegro will seek to be actively involved in the realization of this Summits decisions and recommendations, supporting the future Romanian Presidency and dynamically working towards furthering the position of CEI in the region and implementing its defined priorities.

Thank you for your attention.