 Thank you very much Tony and thank you for your very kind words it's always a pleasure to be here at the Institute and to see many friendly faces from my work in the past both with the Department of Foreign Affairs during the Irish chairmanship of the OCE as well as when I was in the work in the EU and the many contacts I had with friends from Ireland. When the CEPS had its annual conference earlier this year one of the themes of one of the sessions was does Europe matter? Interesting intriguing question but very relevant bearing in mind the current criticisms of the EU as a whole and the EU project the general response at the conference was yes Europe still matters but we need to work much harder to demonstrate that it really matters and that the success of the European integration project has really been one which has been very significant and positive for the citizens of the European Union. I guess the same debate would be relevant for the enlargement agenda of the European Union there's no doubt that unfortunately despite the many successes of the enlargement policy over the past decades there is really an enormous amount of criticism directed against the enlargement policy and probably the most vocal criticism was during the last European Parliament elections when the loudest voices were of course the populist parties who equated more enlargement with more immigration and who generally were very dismissive of the enlargement agenda for the European Union and it's unfortunate it's a reality nevertheless that the enlargement agenda of the European Union has become victim of the very toxic debate on immigration in several of the EU member countries not least in the UK. Of course other issues which weaken the European Union's commitment towards enlargement are the perception of that weakening is the fallout from the financial crisis also several who still feel that perhaps Romania and Bulgaria came in too early etc etc but certainly whatever about the reasons it is very worrying to see that the whole enlargement agenda of the European Union is being questioned and the statement by the new president of the European Commission Mr. Junker in July which he repeated in September that there will be no new enlargement in the next within his mandate within the next five years was most unhelpful even if of course technically he is correct in that none of the countries currently negotiating Montenegro Serbia or Turkey or anywhere near accession but to say that so bluntly sent the very the worst possible message for particularly for the citizens of the Western Balkans who still see the accession to the European Union as the key objective and so it was a really Chancellor Merkel who managed to redress the situation by hosting a summit of the Western Balkan leaders in August last August where she used the opportunity to remind of course the Western Balkans of their responsibilities in terms of the reforms that they must implement in order to come closer to the European Union and for accession negotiations but also she used it as a reminder to the EU of the European Union's commitment to the in particular Western Balkan countries a commitment which had been expressed very clearly in the summit which took place in Thessaloniki in 2003 under the Greek presidency at the time that the future of the Balkans lies in the European Union a very very clear political commitment for the Balkan countries so that summit of Chancellor Merkel which actually when we I was asking people from the Chancellor in Foreign Ministry the initiative came out of how can we commemorate 100 years since the First World War and if you look at the communique of that summit meeting in Berlin at the end of August you will see that there are events that are planned for the next four years in other words the four years of the First World War whatever at the background it was a very very useful initiative and also it was very helpful in reminding the European Union that it would be a grave mistake to turn its back on the Western Balkan countries to do so would certainly fuel the agenda of the nationalists and there are still quite vocal groups of nationalist elements in different countries of the Western Balkans it would also be very useful for the what you might call the the elites the oligarchs the criminal groups who profit from the status quo many refer to them as the gatekeeper elites who are there and who know that the closer their countries come into the European Union the more difficult it will be for them to continue with their unlawful activities with porous borders etc etc so all of these vested interests would be served by the EU and reducing its commitment to the Balkans or turning its back on the Balkans and there's another important factor is that the European Union is not the only player in the Western Balkans Russia has become much more assertive in its foreign policy as we know from the Ukraine situation and it is using that foreign policy assertiveness to make its presence felt in a much more vocal way in the last months in the Balkan countries witness the visit of President Putin to Belgrade a few weeks ago where the opportunity was used to highlight the very strong certainly very strong cultural historic links between the Slavic world between Serbia in particular and Russia and while this is all very good but we know that behind all of that there are clear ulterior motives and of course there are energy interests which are played so the European Union needs to understand that now it is not the only player in the Balkans so another reason why the European Union needs really to maintain the focus on the Western Balkans is the major efforts that are still required for reforms and the last progress reports from the European Commission highlighted very clearly what is still required and the problems which still exist which affect the government governance as a generic word governance in all of these countries just some examples the fact that there is a lack of political dialogue regular dialogue between political parties in different countries which weakens parliamentary institutions there are now boycotts of parliament still under way in Macedonia in Albania and this is also highlighting the critical problem of proper governance there's also continued political interference in the judiciary a selective approach to judicial processes corruption at many levels of government which is remain still endemic like a a cancerous growth in society in these countries and perhaps more alarming of all to and which was highlighted in the progress reports was the continuing and worsening attacks on the media where they are subject to harassment imprisonment violence and of course every effort to ensure that independent media is marginalized completely and linked to that of course is the marginalization of civil society and I've always felt that the EU should have been much more cognizant of the critical role that civil society could play particularly in transition communities post-conflict societies and virtually all the Balkan countries are post-conflict societies and where very often it is civil society that can manage to fill the gap when there is a lack of trust between the government elites and the citizens so of course as the progress reports highlighted the situation is worse in some countries than others and certainly the two countries which come out with the worst scorecards are once again unfortunately Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia and of course the reason for that lies mainly with the countries themselves a lack of political will and a refusal to recognize the importance of the reforms which are there not because the EU says they must be implemented but they are there precisely to help the countries move from the past system into a more democratic market-led economic situation and more democratic institutions but I also feel that the EU must share some of the blame for the bleak picture that we have in the Balkan countries the EU has at times lacked consistency in this progress report for example one year it would highlight the importance of political dialogue the next year it would ignore it virtually are only make a passing reference to it as if there was the element of political expediency to overtake the more objective criteria of assessing the real situation and of course the EU's commitment and weakening of that commitment is also to blame because it means that their EU leverage is much less than it was so what what is the the way forward well certainly the first element is that the EU needs to reinforce and reconfirm in a very vigorous way its determination for enlargement for the accession of in particular the western Balkan countries I'll mention Turkey separately a bit later there needs to be a much more consistent approach in the assessment by the Commission of the situation in each of the countries and also much more prescriptive approach when there was the visa liberalization debate each of the countries in the Balkans were given a list of reforms border management security of documentation etc that they had to fulfill very very detailed road maps and they all achieved that and visa liberalization was granted to virtually all of the Balkan countries and played a major role in strengthening the links between the citizens the students of the Balkans and the European Union this is the approach that should be used much more systematically across the board the the Commission has promoted a correct approach in terms of highlighting the fundamental reforms as a priority rule of law economic governance and public administration but again unfortunately it becomes too much of a technocratic exercise taking the boxes when a legislation has been adopted by a given Parliament that's not enough because very often legislation for example on anti-discrimination protection minorities is adopted fine but then it's not implemented because of a lack of financial resources of a lack of proper consultation of civil society so these criteria should be incorporated and should be checked by the European Union before a law could be deemed to be accepted and also I would suggest and I put it in some of the recommendation of the policy paper that we we published a few weeks ago that on the media the EU needs to be much more vocal much more proactive it makes no sense that the OSCE freedom of the media representative speaks out very strongly on media violation violation against media freedom but that the EU remains very quiet or even silent so there needs to be much more proactive approach and there should be greater support of investigative reporting as a way of checking government and the activities of government and also in the same context the EU needs to be much more supportive in a more systematic way of civil society providing support for them financial support also technical assistance because as I mentioned earlier civil society often are the link between the citizens and fill the gap when governments are not fulfilling their promises and also a strong civil society ensures greater accountability by the government's concern because they act as as a watchdog and finally there needs to be a much more systematic pressure for political dialogue unfortunately in these countries picking up the phone to talk to your political opponents is not something which is automatic and I remember during my last years in Macedonia almost all my time was spent trying to convince the government of the day which is still in power now since 2006 to pick up the phone and invite the opposition leaders for talks and usually it always ended up that we I would have to host a meeting of the political leaders of the parties because otherwise they would not meet and this again really needs to to change and there I think the European Parliament can play an important role in offering and it's something I mentioned at the Eroctus EU First Committee two weeks ago when I presented the paper that support for the youth branches bringing the youth branches of political parties from these the Balkan countries from Serbia Macedonia Albania etc to EU countries to the European Parliament to see how a political dialogue is undertaken and so forth so very briefly just a few points on each of the countries Montenegro and Serbia are negotiations are underway the train is moving along slowly but nevertheless there is a dynamic process there which is in place and that's the great advantage of a negotiation process is that it gives the EU much greater powers as scrutiny over the activities of the government's concerned Albania received candidate status in June and now they will have to work hard on reforms and they're doing relatively well according to the progress reports in order to move to the next stage of the process which would be the Commission recommending a date be set for opening negotiations Macedonia Bosnia-Herzegovina are in the very very difficult situation for Bosnia and Herzegovina as the reports say the accession process is that a standstill and I think that there really needs to be a major initiative of the EU to de-block the situation Bosnia-Herzegovina is a dysfunctional government system unfortunately and if the EU was able to achieve success in the Serbia Kosovo dialogue there's not no reason why it could not undertake a similar effort for Bosnia-Herzegovina and in one of our policy papers we suggested that there needs to be some sort of constitutional conference could be along the lines of the Irish Constitutional Convention where you bring in all the different actors in order to try and move the the process forward and the high representative Mogherini has already admitted that there needs to be some determined action there and for Bosnia apart from the issue of the very serious backsliding in many of the reforms and increasing authoritarian government actions which are affecting the citizens in a very negative way there is the the name the bilateral dispute of the name and it clearly this cannot go on for 19 years the mediation process of the UN has been ongoing in between Macedonia and Greece but has produced no results there needs to be some de-blocking of that just as the bilateral issues disputes between Cyprus and Turkey there needs to be some de-blocking there in order to try to move forward and and on Turkey I would just like to say that unfortunately the accession process is not stalled but it's not going very far and the Commission has proposed on several occasions rightly so that we should try to reactivate the negotiations open in some key areas like rule of law and that that would give a greater possibility for the European Union to impact on the internal process in Turkey but I doubt very much that will happen the only opening perhaps would be at the Commission's proposal that there will be an increased foreign policy dialogue with the candidate countries and certainly with Turkey because it's at a critical place position there in the in the region there could be a lot to be gained but as a compensation for the fact that the negotiations are not moving very far the policy foreign policy dialogue with Serbia would also be very useful a strengthened foreign policy dialogue bearing in mind the earlier issue I mentioned of Serbia's relationship with Russia but also because Serbia on the 1st of January will assume the chairmanship of the OSCE which will give it an international high profile platform where its approach will be critical it cannot sit on the fence it has to take very clear stands on the rule of law and on the importance of the international community and the members of the OSCE to respect the rule of law Kosovo finally a stabilization association agreement was initialed the first stage towards this accession process a very significant when you consider that where the starting point and it's one of the results of the normalization process between Serbia and Kosovo but there they're going through difficulties of trying to form a government which again emphasizes the the the weak political institutions that undermine a progress in that and the broader region so in conclusion I really would emphasize that the European Commission has a major task ahead of it together with the high representative in trying to demonstrate that the transformative power as we call it the European Union still works that it can achieve change in its nearest neighborhood that it confirms its commitment to the in particular the Western Balkan countries Turkey again is a separate case a special case I should say because we know there is a lot of unease within the EU member countries but nevertheless a negotiation process is in place and the EU must respect its commitment and that respect so but at the same time I think the European Union as a whole and it's not just the European Commission needs to understand that allowing double standards to occur within the European Union such as tolerating attacks on media and civil society as has been happening in Hungary is only undermining the credibility of the European Union and is weakening the EU leverage because it's very easy for them to say for the country can say well look at Hungary look at the UK that wants to leave the European Convention of Human Rights why can't we do that so it's really comes down to a question of what kind of Europe do we want and do we want to reaffirm the values of which the European Union is placed do we want to allow countries like Hungary and those to undermine those values it doesn't it's not right that it is Norway and the US that are not in the EU that speak out against this Norway because many of the civil society organizations receiving funds from Norway were the subject of intimidation and criticism and visits of inspectors from the Hungarian government the EU must also speak out on these attacks within the European Union there needs to be a very clear determination to address these issues and on that challenging note I end my introduction thank you very much