 Thank you very much for the introduction. I'm very happy to be here and thank you to the IEA for hosting this in cooperation with the commission with DGNEAR. We have very strict instructions from the Chair on Timing and as he said also I do have a presentation which you will receive so I will try, I will not read out what is on the slides, I'll try and talk around it a bit. Try to go quickly, not speak too quickly as is my unfortunate habit. But let me just try and start with the context, we're talking about the western Balkans today but of course the perspective of western Balkans enlargement is situated within the growth of the European Union from 6 in 1957 to 28 now. You have here the dates and who joined. The point I want to make here is that we had a little debate over lunch as well about the deepening and widening. There's a policy of my country to keep on widening in the hope that the European Union wouldn't deepen. In fact we saw almost the contrary that as we widened we also managed to get deeper. As we went through these different enlargements we managed to create the single market, we managed to establish the single currency and we had the Lisbon Treaty to make the Union fit for purpose when we had the enlargement of 2004. So as we have enlarged we've also managed to get deeper. And the question of today is what comes next after our 28 member states. So who can apply? The treaty says that any European state which respects the values referred to an article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the European Union. I note the words European state because the treaties didn't use to say European and we had an application from Morocco which was never actually responded to and the values that we talk about and this is important for the western Balkans. So the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. So this is the context, this is what we're aiming at when we say that we can have, that we are open to new members. How do they get in there? This is a bit more difficult. We have, as well as the overall, they have to be European and they have to share our values. What do they have to do once they've reached that basic criteria? How do they then go forward? Well, we set out political criteria, economic criteria and something we call the ability to take on obligations of membership. I'll just focus on that for two seconds. This is the famous Aki, which those of us familiar with the European Union hear this word bandied about. It's a huge body of European legislation which sets out what the European Union is. And this is the basic thing that we negotiate with the countries over and we establish that they are able to and before they join they have actually taken on this whole body of legislation. So the written in summary will come back to them because of course, and the people talk about them on the economic I'm sure much more, but it looks simple, stable democratic institutions, human rights, protection of minorities, rule of law. But these are fundamental. These are fundamental changes in a country to bring them to a state of political and democratic maturity. This is just a quick slide which shows how they go from being a potential candidate to actually joining in the steps you see, I think, are the tango steps. So you see it's a bit of moving around and going forwards and backwards and sideways. The first step is to submit an application to say they would like to join. Not every European country does want to join. That's absolutely fine. The commission, as the guardian of the treaty, is then asked to make an opinion on whether that country should start negotiation. This is a huge work, a huge study on the capacity of the country. The commission can make a recommendation. The council cannot accept it. The council decides in the end to start negotiations, which we start at point three. And then this is the stage which has gotten more and more drawn out over the years. I think Croatia, I think it's eight or nine years of negotiations, and our latest candidates are well on the track in number of years already. When we finish the negotiations, we report that they're completed. The parliament gives its consent and then, of course, there's the ratification by both all of the European member states and the country itself. There's a lot of steps in this, which means a lot of points where the member states can agree, disagree, a lot of points when things hopefully go right, but can also go wrong in the accession process. Focusing down on the western Balkans, this is where we are, this is the current agenda. Negotiating with Montenegro and Serbia, recognises candidates but not negotiating with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania, and the potential candidates of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. You'll see the asterisk which we put on the reference to Kosovo, and I'll come back to this later. This is really a small asterisk and it's a small text, but this is really fundamental in Kosovo's potential progress towards the European Union. It's, unfortunately, much more significant than it might seem. The big country missing from here is, of course, Turkey. We're not here to talk about Turkey today, so I haven't put it in the text. Turkey is also negotiating a country. Its negotiations are in the process of being kickstarted, but this is a different and a very big debate which could take us well off today's track. One word about visa liberalisation, so this is not formally part of the accession process, but this is something which recognises the closer relationship that the western Balkans countries do have to the European Union. Visa liberalisation means that the citizens of these countries, people holding the passports, are exempt from needing a visa for short-term tourist travel, so 90 days in the Shengen countries. All of the five of the six countries so far have this visa-free travel. Kosovo not yet, but if all goes well, should hopefully finalise that process quite soon. It's important because it matters very much to the people in the countries of the region to feel this very personal connection with the Union, that they are able to travel for tourism purposes, but they're able to travel freely to the European Union. Speaking with colleagues friends in Kosovo, you referred to the fact that I have worked on Kosovo. There's a feeling of isolation that somehow the Union doesn't want Kosovo. They call themselves the most enclosed country in the world. I think they rate themselves like North Korea in terms of the possibilities of travelling without visa. And this holds its own dangers in terms of the development of the country, the potential radicalisation of youth, and so we do need to be very conscious of what it means to the region, to the countries as well as to the European Union as we look at these issues. It's okay to be neighbours, not all the European countries will or must join the European Union. I think it's interesting, it's Iceland of course, because Iceland decided at one point to go forward with its membership application. And since 2015 they requested that Iceland should not be regarded as a candidate country for EU membership. Again we don't quite know how to deal with countries when they stop somewhere in the process. And we got quite far with Norway and they turned it down in their referendum, but with Iceland they've stopped halfway through the process. We might come to this in the discussion afterwards, but of course my country, the United Kingdom, may end up being one of these neighbours and the question of what kind of relationship would they have with the European Union then becomes very, very, very interesting. So how does it all work in practice? How do we sitting in Brussels actually go about engaging with the Western Balkans? Three broad areas. So we report and we monitor. That sounds quite boring, but it is in fact, as I learn every day, a very valuable process in driving economic and democratic and political change in the countries. We write every year, for each of the countries, a very detailed report called the annual country report for each of the countries, covering all of the areas that I mentioned before, the political criteria, the economic criteria and the capacity of the countries to be part of the European Union. And for us it's the stage in the year we monitor, we say, this is how we think you've done, by comparison to last year, this is how far you have to go. But the countries take these very seriously and we know or I'm realising how often civil society or different interest groups in the countries find these reports extremely useful and helpful in their own attempts to drive change in their countries. Part of this is also the actual accession negotiations which drive a lot of relations with two of our countries. They are a time intensive process, but you could see them as an extension of the reporting, monitoring and preparing for accession. Then we have a network of agreements called the Stabilisation and Association Agreements. These are very comprehensive agreements signed now with all of the countries in the region, including Kosovo as from the 1st of April. We had to find a special way of having an agreement with Kosovo because not all Member States recognise the country, I'll call it a country. But nonetheless the agreement is more or less as substantial as the others. They are about economic relations, trade relations, political relations, really again demonstrating the privileged relationship that the countries in the western Balkans do have with the European Union. Finally, financial and technical assistance, huge financial support to the countries in the region with the aim to drive forward economic and political change. 11.7 billion euros from the period 2014 to 2020, a similar figure for 2007 to 2013. A billion of this in this current period we plan to spend on connectivity projects, so building the network of transport and energy networks throughout the region. I will come, I think I have a few minutes, really a couple of minutes just to go briefly through the countries. On the slides you will see more detail. So I thought I would just say what I think is the challenge for each of the countries just in a couple of words or one sentence. For me the challenge for Montenegro is on the rule of law and being the first country to experience the new approach we have to enlargement accession negotiations where we focus from an early stage and throughout the accession enlargement negotiations on the rule of law. So we started negotiating these chapters so-called at the very beginning. We monitor them throughout and if Montenegro falls backwards on the rule of law we will stop negotiating on the other more technical chapters. So this is a challenge I think for Montenegro. The other challenge is that they are a small country and for them to push ahead towards the union alone will be difficult to engage I think the member states in that process. Serbia's challenge is the normalisation of its relations with Kosovo. Serbia we have as part of its negotiate our mandate to negotiate with Serbia that they need to make progress in normalising relations with Kosovo and by the time of their accession to have a legally binding agreement. We don't say they have to recognise Kosovo but we say there has to be a legally binding agreement on the normalisation of relations and this is extremely difficult for Serbia. Serbia claims Kosovo as part of Serbia. So this will be Serbia's main challenge in moving forward along with of course the reforms. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will hear a lot more about later so I will be very brief the challenges, the political crisis which I think you will talk about and how to move out of this to continue forward on negotiations. Albania, again the challenges on the rule of law and I think here not just substantively within Albania but the perception of Albania. I think we hear a lot about Albanian criminal organised crime networks throughout the union and I think this is a real challenge for Albania but also a challenge of perception. Bosnia and Herzegovina, for me the main challenge here is the internal division, the situation in Bosnia which makes it extremely difficult to agree on an EU path either at the political level or at the very practical level of how to spend EU funds or how to negotiate with us on the stabilisation and association agreement. So until these internal structures and institutions in Bosnia are somehow clarified it's difficult to see progress moving very quickly. Kosovo, Kosovo's problem is Serbia put simply not because Serbia wants to be difficult with Kosovo but because of their history and the claims that Serbia has over Kosovo. Kosovo's problem is also that five member states don't recognise it so it's difficult within the council to find ways to go forward which respect as they should these five member states views and positions on Kosovo but allow us to deal with Kosovo in the same way as we do with the other countries. Finally, the refugee crisis, you referred to it when you opened and I think we probably will come back to it during the discussion. This sets out what we have done, a very small part of what we've done in the European Union to address the refugee crisis. It impacts on the western Balkans because this was one of the main routes over the last months over the last year for people coming to the European Union. It challenged the countries on that route to deal with the migrants, how could they deal with them humanely with respect for the rule of law. It's also an issue because many citizens had, of the western Balkans countries, many. There have been cases of citizens from these countries making asylum claims and founded asylum claims in the European Union and the refugee crisis has meant that their claims are now being rejected more quickly than they would be so there have been challenged also on that front. It has on the positive side allowed us to engage with the countries in the region. As the slide mentions we had a 17 point plan came out of a meeting of leaders which involved countries in the region on a level basis which I think was important, necessary and valued by the countries in the region. I think I've just about stuck to 15 minutes and this is how you can find us and I'm looking forward to discussing later. Thank you very much. Tony, thank you very much and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be back here at the Institute. I greatly value the work the Institute has done over the years on the western Balkans. I think it's very important to keep this region in focus and it's a region that is very close to my heart and I know to many of you as well. I want to give my short presentation. I want to give a slightly optimistic spin to how I and my colleagues at the EBRDC this region. It's not the first time I've been optimistic about the western Balkans in this institute and other venues but I really feel that there is an opportunity for this region to move forward over the next decade economically speaking and of course in parallel with their EU accession process that Catherine has been outlining. I'm basing most of my remarks around this paper that I've made available and will be put on the website. The paper is called how the western Balkans can catch up. Even the title, we originally phrased the title of this paper as a question. Can the western Balkans catch up? We were briefing our president and he said to us, well why don't you, this sounds great but why don't you change the title, take the question mark out and phrase it as a more definitive, not can they but how they can. So this is what the paper is about. What I want to do in my short summary of the paper is basically three things. I will show you firstly that although there is a big convergence and competitiveness gap between the western Balkans and the rest of Europe that there are definite signs that these gaps are closing. So that's the first point. Secondly, I'll give you five reasons why we think people and companies, investors should invest in the western Balkans. Five advantages of this region. And thirdly, I'll give you five areas where we think growth in the coming decades can come from. Now I'm going to conclude the talk then just with a minute or two and sort of the longer term challenges because I don't want to be totally pan glossy and I want to recognize that there are deep challenges facing this region but overall I think it is a region with strong convergence potential. I'm coming from the EBRD so I want to just say firstly about our involvement in the region. We are I think by any measure the largest investor in the region particularly in private sector development which is really at the core of our mandate. We've over the 20 plus years we've been active here we've invested cumulatively 9.3 billion euros and have an active portfolio at the moment of 5.2 billion euros. And the charts show you the spread by sector and by country but you can see that we're quite well spread across different sectors although obviously with the strong emphasis on transport and energy but also financial institutions and general industry and the right hand chart shows you the breakdown by country against Serbia naturally as the biggest country taking the lion's share of our investment. We have a strong commitment to this region a strong presence on the region offices in all countries and a very active pipeline of projects we would expect to invest this year somewhere in the region of 800 million possibly up to 1 billion euro across these six countries. Now when it comes to convergence this chart I like showing because it crystallizes the gap in living standards between the western Balkans and the rest of Europe and it can be summarized in three fractions. One half, one third and one quarter. Roughly speaking western Balkan countries on average have about half the GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing parity of the eastern European, central and eastern European countries that have joined the EU since 2004. It's roughly one third of the GDP in southern European EU countries and it's about a quarter of the GDP per capita in western European countries. So that's an indication of the size of the challenge and it's a reflection of the lack of competitiveness of this region. Now in this table I'm summarizing probably the most comprehensive overview of competitiveness globally which is the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness report. I'm not going to go into any of the details but just to highlight in red some of the areas where the western Balkans on that measure really likes behind. The quality of infrastructure, the quality of labour market functioning efficiency and a pillar called business sophistication which has to do with really sort of more advanced ways of running business, professional management, developing value chains and the like. So these are some of the areas where the western Balkans lags behind. Nevertheless if you look at how these indicators have changed since 2007 you'll see in this chart a significant progress in the western Balkans relative to other EU countries. Whether you take the whole EU or whether you look at the EU 15, this is the pre 2004 members or the EU 11 which are the 11 central and eastern European countries that joined in 2004 are later. You got a similar story if you look at World Bank governance indicators. There is discernible progress in the last eight years in the western Balkans versus stagnation elsewhere in the EU. In that important sense in terms of competitiveness and governance there is catch up and convergence going on in the western Balkans. Now what can the region offer to investors? Well I said I'd give you five things to offer and the first one is the prospective EU membership so I will not say any more about this because Catherine very eloquently described that process and where we stand. But I think it is very important for us at the EBRD trying to bring investors to the region to emphasise this perspective, the perspective of long term membership for all of these countries. Secondly macroeconomic stability. Sometimes it's perceived in common discourse that these are very poor basket case countries but they're not and macroeconomically they're quite stable. They have low inflation. They have fiscal deficits that are broadly under control. Some of them are currently in IMF programmes at the moment and that's helping to anchor macroeconomic stability. And exchange rates are all closely tied to the euro which helps I think low inflation. Thirdly the strategic location. So this region is well on the doorstep of the EU it offers free access to EU markets for most goods. It's linked by the various trans European corridors but also it's becoming of increasing interest to other investors and notably the Chinese. Now China has increasingly recognised the importance of the western Balkans as a gateway to Europe. You'll see this also China's interest in southeastern Europe more generally is increasing very rapidly. Most recently Chinese investors have completed the privatisation of Firaeus port in Greece and they see that then as a gateway up through Europe with various infrastructure plans. This is a very exciting development I think for southeastern Europe and the western Balkans in particular. The economies are quite diverse. The chart is showing the sectoral breakdown by different countries. I think the point is here, the point here is that no country is excessively reliant on one or two industries. It's quite a broad spread and therefore quite a broad spread of opportunities for investors with of course differences within countries that you can see here. Lastly taxes and labour costs. The left hand chart shows the total tax burden as a percentage of profit. You'll see that on average in the western Balkans it's significantly lower than in the EU. On the right hand side you see unit labour costs which again are quite favourable relative to EU standards. Not surprisingly given the living standards and overall GDP in the region. Again from an investor point of view these are not necessarily decisive but they are part of the mix. Part of the mix of decisions of investors when they are looking whether to locate here or somewhere else. Having I hope convinced you that there are reasons to invest here where will the growth come from in the next ten years? Well we think foreign direct investment is really crucial and in this the region has lagged behind as the left hand chart shows again you see western Balkan FDI stock per capita around 2.5,600 euro per capita relative to more than 14,000 in the EU. So this chart in a way matches quite closely the convergence gap that I highlighted at the start. So attracting more investment is really critical for these countries and we would expect it to come from non-traditional sources increasingly in the coming decade like China, like the Gulf countries which we see now investing in Serbia and some other countries as well. It's very important that this is concentrated into tradable sectors which means to my next point that trade integration in this region is below potential. What the left hand chart shows is a standard measure of trade openness. This is exports plus imports divided by GDP which is again on average well below even the EU 11 standards never mind the EU. So this is a sign that to date countries are not yet sufficiently integrated into EU and global supply chains and that there's a need to upgrade the sophistication of exported goods. Transport infrastructure, this is a key area for EBRD, other IFIs and of course for the European Union as a whole to try and improve the quality of transport infrastructure. Here again I'm showing you the World Economic Forum competitiveness indicators which show you how the size of the gap that needs to be bridged in the coming years. Because of the lack of fiscal space increasingly these countries will have to search for private sector solutions and this is something that the EBRD can really help with. Energy sector we see is having strong potential in the region. There are a number of significant energy projects underway or in the pipeline. Increasingly this region is seen as an important transit region for gas and there are two pipelines currently either underway or about to begin. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline and the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline but also we can see significant gains coming from improving energy efficiency and through greater regional cooperation through the energy community. Lastly we think there's strong potential for innovation to drive growth. What this chart is showing you is a survey that we in the World Bank do every few years business environment and enterprise performance survey where we asked firms the extent to which they are introducing new products or processes or new standards of organization or marketing. So in the western Balkans you don't have much R&D going on and you don't have much world leaders in new products but you do have a lot of companies which are willing to adopt and adapt to take new technology that's been developed elsewhere and introduce it into their own companies. And when you combine this with relatively well educated workforces and relatively low labor costs then I think there's really potential for this sector to be an important growth driver in the coming decade. Lastly long term challenges and risks. I just want to mention four of them. I think we may take up some of them in the discussion. I think I've highlighted I've shown here the stuck in transition chart. I think I presented this report here a couple of years ago. This is our 2013 transition reports stuck in transition which argue that many countries in the region have really come to a bit of a block in their reform process. And this I think is true to some extent for some of the western Balkan countries. It is harder to do reforms when you're not growing much. This is one of the lessons I think we've learned in transition. And there is a risk that if countries stay stuck in transition then their growth rates and their convergence will lag behind. A second long term issue is financial sector fragility. The financial sectors in this region have managed to survive the crisis quite well. They're dominated by foreign owned banks. But nevertheless we see a strong need for greater regional cooperation and cooperation with the EU bodies as well within the new European financial architecture. Demographic inclusion trends. These are quite worrying for some of these countries. Falling populations, low labour force participation, strong migration pressures outwards as we've already mentioned. I think these are issues that need to be addressed. And lastly we haven't mentioned yet I think today but global warming and climate change is a very important long term threat to this region that I think needs to be addressed now in order to avoid big problems down the road. Thank you for the invitation. Good afternoon. I do hope that I'll keep the optimism going at least for until the presentation is over or at least until the 6th of June. But then it's the barrel bomb of the Balkans. There are three titles that are very important in our policy brief. New approach for Macedonia is the main title and that's one of the important titles. The barrel bomb of the Balkans is the other one and the third one is are we near enough? Questioning whether there will be any work left for the region near to do if nothing is done until the 5th of June. As many of the other speakers mentioned so far Macedonia has been living in a state of permanent political crisis since December 2012. It was on the 24th of December that the opposition and journalists were kicked out of parliament just for the sake of enacting the law on budgets according to the model and to fit the expenses or the expenditures of the ruling party. Since then the EU supported or facilitated an agreement that put everything below the carpet and that bump grew and we were stumbled on the bump last year in February 2012. 2013 was the extension of the crisis. 2014 were the early parliamentary elections, the last early parliamentary elections and the regular presidential which we ended up with the same government as before and with the same president as before. The opposition stated that they don't recognize their election results and boycotted the parliament and their work. OSCEO dear the mission just evaluated or concluded on the elections that they were efficiently administered including on the election day but they failed to credit the elections as fair free democratic and most of all credible. Last year in February the wiretapping scandal was out and that was a new insight of how situation is in Macedonia or how things were done in the past in Macedonia. The released wiretap conversations opened up to allegations of crime or criminal actions on behalf of high governmental officials, involving electoral frauds, corruption etc. The EU again facilitated or sponsored an agreement that was reached first on the 2nd of June then on the 15th of July it was in the residence of the EU ambassador in Skopje in a neighborhood called Pyrgynno and thus Pyrgynno Accord. It doesn't mean much when it comes to the name but it means quite a lot when you see all of the steps on the pathway towards bringing back democracy and guaranteeing rule of law in the country and then holding credible elections which were supposed to be on the 24th of April so last weekend. But they were again postponed for the 5th of June because the international community came out and said that there are no conditions for elections, at least no conditions for credible elections in the country. The important thing about Pyrgynno and you will have already received some of the materials. There is an infographic showing the implementation phase of Pyrgynno and all its 23 steps on the pathway and you will see that most of the steps have not been implemented or have been implemented until a point in time and then something happened that took a reverse turn and brought back the situation as it was prior to the conclusion of the agreement. Some of the most important steps of the Pyrgynno Accord are the constitution of a government for organizing elections that had two ministers from the opposition in the government, the minister of interior that's clearly in charge for organizing or facilitating the organization of the elections and the minister of labor and social policy that has to do a lot with where the government was drawing its support in the previous electoral cycles. The important thing here about this step is that on the 14th of April after the dissolution of parliament the government adopted the decision stripping those two ministers of their competencies and bringing the state back to prior to their appointment in the government. The other important step is the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the people that are implicated with the wiretapping scandal. In March this year the constitutional court decided that the law on presidential pardon was unconstitutional, one part of the law, its amendments from 2009. And decided that the president should have authority to give pardon to people that have committed electoral fraud. Surprisingly enough the first case of the special prosecutor was on electoral fraud. And on the 12th of April after parliament has been dissolved the president decided to issue pardon to 56 individuals that have been implicated in all of the cases that so far have been developed by the special prosecutor. What is important here is that this brought to a point that we started, we. I'm part of the movement but everybody that's free thinking or pro-western, pro-democratic, pro-EU in a way participates in the colorful revolution demanding that democracy is brought back to the country and rule of law is guaranteed. If we go further on and discuss why is the barrel bomb or why do we question are we near enough, we need to look into public support for the EU or public support for EU's work in the country. In our last years research that was conducted during the releases of the wiretaps, wiretaps communications, we found out that 60% of the people demanded the involvement of the international community but also the involvement of the EU in settling or resolving the crisis. 67% of the survey people demanded, well said that they would vote yes in a referendum to join the EU if it was held that Sunday, that particular Sunday. This is important because if you analyze it further on, Macedonia is a mixture of cultures, religions, ethnicities, et cetera, Macedonia, well Salad Macedon actually shows how difficult or how a mixture is, the country is. Albanian population has a support of 93, 95% of the Albanians say that they want to join the EU. Macedonian support is significantly lower. When we go to political parties, the ruling party of the Macedonians, the democrystian, supposedly democrystian, has 50.2% support for EU accession. They have been very vocal in saying that they have been pressured into negotiating a deal. This is something that the EU and the Western world is imposing on the country and that secret services from foreign countries are working to destroy the country. If the elections on the 5th of June take place, this divide and this conflict that was so far between the Macedonians will switch to being between Macedonians and Albanians. Albanians will feel disenchanted by their political parties because they have participated in the elections and Vamber o Dapamanae will be more free to say that, okay, now we are dropping the EU and NATO accession and will look for other alternatives. Erdogan has been promoted as the best alternative possible for development without democracy and the EU has facilitated also other examples in the case of Hungary and illiberal democracy according to the understanding of Prime Minister Orban. So if this happens, if the country actually because of the ruling party drops EU accession as an objective, what we are to expect is that this will become an interethnic conflict and then that's the moment when Macedonia enters into its explosive phase. That's the battle of the Baltas. What to do in order to prevent this or how to react to prevent this? Mind you, we have to take actions now in the next week rather than wait for the elections because if we wait for the elections then it's all over. We have already lost all of the strings that we were pulling so now we have to take decisive and stronger actions. First of all, we feel that the EU failed to recognize its core values, democracy and rule of law in the case of Macedonia and failed to show consistency in its approach towards Macedonia at least from the Percino accord on. We also feel that there is a consensus built upon Macedonia between Parliament Council and the Commission according to what MEP Richard Howitt said. He was the previous rapporteur from the Parliament on Macedonia. So if there is actually a consensus and if the MEPs tree to be exact, apart from Howitt, Cucan from Slovakia and Ivo Weigl from Slovenia, all three represented different political groups in the Parliament have been involved in the facilitation of the agreement in order to include both the Commission and Council. We should change sponsor instead of Commissioner Hahn to High Representative and Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini just to represent both of the institutions on the table. Involve some of the most influential EU member states because so far we have seen that on the ground Germany, UK, France and Italy have been more involved, have been producing more results and have been imposing their influence, national influence on the government while producing some form of reforms. In order for this sex test to work or to produce some form of results, first of all we need to have a decision on negotiations enabling measures, meaning we need to force political party leaders into negotiations. By blacklisting some of the 56 pardoned individuals, by deciding on assets freeze on some of those 56 pardoned individuals, mind you there are some that have dual nationality, Macedonia and also nationality of EU member states. Finally, maybe even go into deciding on funds freeze, blocking the implementation of some of the EPA projects or reprogramming EPA in order to achieve more results. This is the sticks approach and according to James Kylindzi it's the slowly, slowly approach. On the other side we need to have the carrots approach and here with the carrots, well to rephrase better in a stature, democracy and rule of law are absolutely non-negotiable. In that sense we need to take the urgent reform priorities and previous reports from last year, transform it into a rule of law action plan, establish a transitional government for a period of one or two years that will have apart from politicians experts sitting in the government to implement the rule of law action plan. And also redesign this rule of law action plan as a pre-negotiations for chapters 23 and 24 just for the sake of keeping the country on track. And as I said prior to the seminar, the EU needs to showcase good examples or needs lessons learned for other countries. The process is long, it takes seven, eight years and countries are taking the examples of their bad friends rather than from their good friends. If the EU is decisive enough in tackling the Macedonian issue as it should, I believe that you won't have the same problems with Serbia soon enough and you won't have the same problems with Bosnia and Herzegovina.