The Prime Ministers of Macedonia and Albania, Zoran Zaev and Edi Rama, and the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic have agreed upon the basic directions of the regional connection and the creation of a “small Schengen” between the Western Balkans countries, part of the working agenda of the Chamber Investment Forum – CIF as well, at the trilateral working meeting of the leaders held in Ohrid, last weekend. The three parties adopted the joint declaration last month and called on the leaders from the rest of the Balkan countries to join them, with the aim of building a different Western Balkans, which will grow into a better place for life and a significant factor toward the European Union, and the benefits such as mutual recognition of academic diplomas, fast truck lanes to eliminate the delay of goods at the border crossings and crossing the border with identity card only, are just a part of the agenda.

The action plan, which is supposed to be implemented by 2021 by the three parties provides for:

- free movement of the citizens through the regional countries with identity cards only;

- efficient border crossings where the control services will work 24/7 and a fast lane for shortest possible delay of the trucks that transport goods and products;

- mutual recognition of all documents from the segment of food and veterinary agencies to all other administrative institutions that process the documents;

- creating a framework for recognition of the professional qualifications for the deficient professions and a program for greater mobility of the students and youth;

- strengthening the efforts toward mutual automatic recognition of the academic diplomas of the citizens from the entire region without additional validations;

- strengthening the police cooperation for cross border combat against crime, terrorism, illegal migration and emergencies, as well as development of common platform for joint investment offers…