 It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here, but allow me to use the first few sentences to thank Ireland for what it did during its presidency, for keeping the enlargement, and especially something that I'm sometimes hesitant to call enlargement. And this is the Western Balkans or Southeast Europe project, which I see much more as the consolidation of European territory than enlargement. By now that part of Europe is surrounded by European Union, and in some ways it's the sign of the EU project being a real political project, and really caring about its territory and consolidation of its territory. That's also an issue here when we speak about the enlargement to Southeast Europe. So thank you, Iman and Lucinda, for keeping this on the agenda, focusing on that. And it's, I think, very clear that if you follow the EU enlargement process over many years like Ireland has, you do develop an understanding and sensitivity of the importance of this project, not only as a sort of political idea, but also as a very practical and effective tool in state building and institution building and reforming throughout Europe. I was at Thessaloniki, and just the other day by coincidence, I ran across some photographs from that meeting. I was at that time a parliamentarian. We looked very different. We looked very different ten years ago. And although ten years is a very short period, if you look at sort of historical perspectives and state building, it's actually a long period in a person's life. And I think it's important to look at these processes also from that perspective, because a lot of people who get and got involved into the European project in the respective countries got involved in this, because they saw this as something that will actually change their own lives, where they can improve the lives for themselves, for the people they know, for the people around them, where they can make it safer, where they can make it more stable, where they can make it more secure in the future, where they can make long-term create long-term stability for the institutions of the state, which the countries of the region actually didn't have for the last 150 years, and in some cases even longer. So as this process of enlargement, this process of transformation within the countries of southeastern Europe or western Balkans continues and is slowly progressing, maybe in 50 years time when people look back, they will say, ah, it actually went fast. But looking from the point of view of our lives, it actually is a slow process. And our lives, certainly the lives of my generation, will pass in that process. So for us, it's imperative that it succeeds. Because if it doesn't succeed, the entire political work involvement, but also civic work, it doesn't have to be worked by politicians. It can be by NGOs, by people at universities, by students, by a number of different people. It would have been invested in something that would turn out to be futile. So it is crucial, not only from the point of stability, from the point of political transformation, but also from the point of view of personal experience, lives, involvement in political processes, motivation for the generations to come to get involved in political processes. It is crucial that this endeavor succeed. It has been, I would say, important to keep in mind that in the western Balkans, there are a few prerequisites with which we start. One is that all the countries have an EU perspective. The other is that there is almost of equal importance, the accession process itself and the membership. The accession process here is not only the roads to membership. The accession process is a process of state building and institution transformation and institution creation in all the countries of the region. So looking from creation experience, and I think it's pretty applicable to everybody else in the region, both processes are of the same importance. And the third thing is that the whole process has to have or create the partners in the countries of the region. It cannot be imported in the sense of somebody bringing all these changes or bringing all these reforms from outside. You have to have viable partners, in other words, segments, important segments at least, of political elites that want these things to happen, that want these reforms that want to become part of the European Union. And that one of the important issues is to learn and sort of understand the difference between declaratory consensus and working consensus. There is no question that there is declaratory consensus throughout the region in all the countries of the region, meaning that if you ask people of different political parties or different institutions or different segments of society, do you want your country to become a member of the European Union? The answer would be yes. But the other harder question is, would you actually pass up on scoring political points, scoring even one little political point? If that would mean that your country would make progress or make a step towards membership, the answer might be different. So to go from saying, yes, yes, we are all in favor, to actually being able to make compromises to create consensus, to pass up on scoring political points in order to advance your country's chances for membership or getting closer to membership, this is also an important political sort of exercise in maturing politically of the quality of each of the countries. It took us, we always debate whether it took us 12 years or 10 years to get from point A to point B where we are now, although there were a lot of different stages and a lot of different obstacles that we couldn't and didn't foresee along the road. It took us 12 years from the Stabilization Association Agreement and it took us 10 years from the date when we officially, when Croatia officially handed in its application for membership till now or July 1 when all things going well, Croatia will become a full member. We are now missing half of a ratification. We have the lower house of the German Parliament, we are missing the upper house or the Bundesrat of the German Parliament and that should be it. Which means that 27 Member States or Parliaments of 27 Member States, if you include the lower house of the German Parliament, think that together with the Commission that Croatia is ready for membership, we think so too but we don't think that this is, this should be our ambition, we think that our ambition should be higher. But to sort of stop this at this point, it has been different, it has been more complicated and demanding and there were a lot of requirements or obstacles that we had to face along the road which everybody in Croatia would say were not fair. In other words were not faced by other countries or didn't have to be dealt with by other countries that joined before us and it took us a long time to realize that this is nothing to do with, the whole process has nothing to do with this, that actually the whole process is also a learning process that you have to be able to deal with the obstacles that you encounter rather than count on having the same hurdles as everybody else before you. And if you talk to, and when we talk to our colleagues from other Member States, we discovered that all of them thought they had obstacles that shouldn't have been there or requirements that were new and were not met, that were not encountered by some previous countries. So it's also an exercise in gradually maturing politically and developing skills and instruments to be able to solve problems rather than to be able to foresee in advance what you will encounter and then having to deal with that. You have to deal with things that come your way along the way and in that also I would say reduce the emotional politics and come closer to let's say more operational or rational politics that's sometimes less interesting and attractive, that's more technical, that's definitely more boring. Sorry, but in the end maybe the most important thing is that it becomes exceedingly less dangerous. In Europe I think it's important and in our part of Europe it's additionally important and additionally valued because we know what the alternative is. So to end, because I'm sure I've exhausted the 10 minutes, to end instead of going through everything that we've encountered and obviously we can talk a little bit about it later to say that we have moved from in this process that meant changing institutions, building institutions but we have moved in the region from a notion from the late 90s and early 2000s where membership of the European Union meant in the heads of the people but also I would say in the heads of the political elites meant an escape from the Balkans. To the state where we are today means taking the responsibility for the Balkans, taking the responsibility for your own region and instead of running away from it, turning it into a successful European project and this will not happen without everybody from the region meeting the criteria, going through the reforms and becoming members. Our experience is keep very high standards and criteria but send positive political messages. It helps and it will produce results. Thank you very much. Thank you chef.