EU-Western Balkans Summit: a renewed approach to the region

Bojan Božović is the Minister of Justice of Montenegro, previously having served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of European Affairs. He is also currently a PhD candidate in International Private Law and Public International Law, and a doctoral student majoring in EU Law. In addition to his academic career, Božović has worked in the NGO sector, law firms, and as an expert and consultant on projects of the Council of Europe, German International Cooperation Society (GIZ) and the International Labour Organisation.

Helmut Brandstätter is an Austrian Member of the European Parliament, having previously worked for the ORF in Vienna, Bonn and Brussels as an editor, correspondent and head of the Politics and Current Affairs Department. He then became Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director at n-tv Berlin. Within the European Parliament, he is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, Ukraine and the Euronest Parliamentary Committees.

Ana Brnabić is the former Prime Minister of Serbia, having previously held the position of Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government. In this position, she worked on the reform of public administration through introduction of e-government, so that the state would become a true service for citizens. She is a member of the “New Leaders for Europe” group of the World Economic Forum and the Advisory Board of the organisation “World Minds”, which brings together the world’s most important innovators from all fields. Prior to her election to the Serbian government, she was director of Continental Wind Serbia, President of the National Alliance for Local Economic Development and a member of the Board of Directors of the non-profit organisation PEXIM.

Milica Delević is the Director for Governance and Political Affairs at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.  Prior to joining the Bank, Delević worked as the Director of the European Integration Office of the Serbian Government, Assistant Foreign Minister and chaired the Committee for European Integration in the Serbian Parliament. She served as a board member of Serbia’s Open Society Foundation, and has also lectured on foreign policy and European integration at the University of Belgrade and the Central European University. Delević is a member of a number of professional organisations, including the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group.

Nicole Farnsworth leads research teams and co-authors reports at Kosovo Women’s’ Network, a network that advocates on behalf of women of all ethnic groups in Kosovo at the local, regional and international level. Originally from the US, Farnsworth has been living and working in Kosovo for 16 years, primarily with local civil society organisations. A sociologist, researcher and gender equality activist, she has written several influential reports on gender equality, gender-based violence, gender-responsive budgeting and integrating a gender perspective in the EU Accession process. Farnsworth is the Team Leader for an EU-funded Action to ‘Empower CSOs in Combatting Discrimination and Furthering Women’s Labour Rights’, implemented by a coalition of six women’s rights groups in the Western Balkans.

Arben Fetai currently serves as Deputy Prime Minister of Good Governance and Transparency in the government of North Macedonia. His professional career began as a junior expert on a project financed by the EU for support of the Assembly of Kosovo. Fetai was then a liaison officer on the project for building capacities for European integration in the office of the Prime Minister of Kosovo. In recent years, he has worked as a global advocacy coordinator at Aidsfonds in Brussels and as executive director of the Arben Xhaferi Institute for Public Policy in Skopje.

Cristina Gherasimov has been Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration and Chief Negotiator with the EU since January 2024. With extensive experience in various official roles, she has played a key part in Moldova’s European integration. Previously, Gherasimov served as an advisor on Foreign Policy and European Integration to the President of Moldova and as Secretary General of the Presidential Office. She also held the position of Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration. Before joining the government, she acquired a rich background in research institutes, think tanks and public organisations.

Kyriakos Hadjiyianni is a Cypriot Member of Parliament and Vice-President of the Assembly of the OSCE. He also serves as Special Representative on South East Europe and previously served as Chair and Rapporteur of the General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, as well as Special Representative on Civil Society Engagement. He is a member of the House of Representatives of Cyprus, where he serves as Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Educational Affairs and Culture. He is also a Member of the Committee on Refugees-Enclaved-Missing-Adversely Affected Persons.

Thomas Hagleitner is Head of Unit for Western Balkans Policy and Regional Strategy at the European Commission. He studied at the University of Vienna and the College of Europe in Bruges, and has worked for the European Commission since 1995. After many years at the Secretariat General, he has been dealing with enlargement policy and notably the Western Balkans for 15 years. He has dealt in particular with the Croatian accession process, from the application to accession, as well as the EU’s overall enlargement strategy. He has been responsible for the accession negotiations with Montenegro in the Commission’s DG for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiation for seven years.

Prior to joining Friends of Europe, Dharmendra Kanani was director of policy at the European Foundation Centre (EFC). He was the England director at the Big Lottery Fund, the largest independent funder in the UK and fourth largest in the world. Dharmendra has held senior positions in the public and voluntary sectors and advisor to numerous ministerial policy initiatives across the UK.

*Consultant at Friends of Europe.

Gert Jan Koopman is the Director-General of the Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations. Prior to this, he served as the director-general of the European Commission’s budget department. In this role, he contributed to putting in place the European Union’s €800bn NextGenerationEU recovery plan, as well as the €18bn MFA+ for Ukraine. He has worked to enable its financing on the capital markets through a sovereign-style funding system. Having served the EU for nearly three decades, Koopman was previously in charge of state aid control at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition. His earlier assignments included senior management posts in the department for economic and financial affairs, the Commission’s economic service, as well as enterprise and industry, which supervises the smooth running of the single market. 

Jakov Milatović is the President of Montenegro and founder of the Europe Now! Movement, formerly having served as Minister of Economic Development. Previously, he worked in the banking sector in Montenegro and abroad. In the sector for economic and political analysis at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he dealt with the economic analysis of the region of Southeast Europe and countries of the Western Balkans. As a U.S. government scholarship holder, Milatović spent a year at Illinois State University and attended programmes organised by the United Nations in New York, German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Embassy of Montenegro in Rome and Office for International Cooperation of the Faculty of Economics in Podgorica.

Aleksandar Nikoloski Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport of the Republic of North Macedonia. In 2006 Nikoloski was elected member of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia where he performed his duties by 2016. He was re-elected in 2002 and discharged his duty until 2024. In the Assembly, he was a member and president of several commissions and committees, including the Committee on Rules of Procedure and Mandatory-Immunity Issues, Foreign Policy Committee, Committee on Constitutional Issues and the Committee on the Political System and Inter-Ethnic Relations. Nikoloski was also an active participant in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe where he performed the duty of a Vice-President in the period 2015-2017. He was the first Vice-President of the Committee on Political Issues and Democracy and first Vice-President of the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee). 

Urmas Paet is a current Member of the European Parliament for Estonia, having previously served as Minister of Culture of Estonia, before becoming the Minister of Foreign Affairs for almost ten years. He specialises in foreign and security policy issues, and is Vice-Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and a substitute member of the Committee on Transport and Tourism.

Karlo Ressler has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. He has served as the Parliament’s chief negotiator for the European budget and as Vice-Chair of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence. Today, he is the Head of the Croatian EPP delegation and an EPP coordinator in the Committee on Budgets. He also heads the European parliament delegation for relations with North Macedonia. His parliamentary work primarily focuses on the budget and economic competitiveness, migration issues and digital transition. He is a graduate of law and previously worked as an assistant to an MEP and an advisor to Andrej Plenković, Prime Minister of Croatia.

Retiring from NATO in September 2018 after 38 years at the organisation, Jamie Shea has occupied a number of senior positions at NATO across a wide range of areas, including external relations, press and media, and policy planning. As NATO’s spokesperson, he was the face of the alliance during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts. He later worked as the director of policy planning in the private office of former secretary general Rasmussen during the preparation of NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept. Shea is also a regular lecturer and conference speaker on NATO and European security affairs.

Erida Skëndaj is Executive Director of the Albanian Helsinki Committee, having previously joined the executive staff of the AHC as a lawyer specialised in criminal law and human rights by providing legal services to vulnerable groups and monitoring the institutions of the criminal justice system and elections. She was also appointed as legal coordinator of the Technical Secretariat of the Judiciary Group. Since the beginning of her career, Skëndaj has authored a number of publications in the field of human rights, justice and judiciary institutions, corruption and impunity, concerning immunity and referendums.

Olha Stefanishyna currently serves as the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, and Minister of Justice of Ukraine. Previously, she worked as Director and Director-General of the Government Office for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Alexander van Dam is a National Member for the Netherlands at Eurojust, and is a member of the Counterterrorism Team and the Board on Relations with Partners. Prior to his appointment at Eurojust, van Dam worked as Resident EU Prosecutor in Belgrade under the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance programme. Before taking up his current role, he worked as Acting Director of the National Prosecution Service, and was previously Prosecutor General for Aruba, an independent country in the framework of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Beforehand, van Dam was Deputy Chief Prosecutor in the District Zeeland-West-Brabant and before senior prosecutor and magistrate in the Districts of Haarlem, The Hague and Amsterdam. As a public prosecutor he oversaw many terrorist cases and represented the National Public Prosecution Service during court trials.

Tatjana Shterjova Dushkovska is the Secretary General of the Western Balkans 6 Chamber Investment Forum, an association of the six chambers of commerce from the Western Balkans region, which represents 350,000 companies from the region and has actively been involved in the implementation of the Common Regional Market Action Plan.  Prior to her current engagement, she has had more than ten years of experience in the Economic Chamber of North Macedonia, and was previously engaged as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Law at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.

Dr Valbona Zeneli currently holds the role of Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, with a dual affiliation at the Europe Center and the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Transatlantic Security Initiative. From 2011 to 2023, she served as a Professor of National Security Studies and Chair of Strategic Engagements at the U.S. Department of Defense’s George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. She is also a visiting scholar for 2023-2024 at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre (RSC) at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Dr Zeneli specialises in transatlantic relations, strategic competition, NATO, globalisation, European Union enlargement and the Western Balkans. In 2023, she won the Inspiration for Women Award.

Marta Kos is the European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, having previously served as the Ambassador of Slovenia to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and Germany and Latvia. Prior to her public service, she was Director of Gustav Käser Training International and the Vice-President for International Relations at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia. Her professional background is in journalism, where she worked for Radio Deutsche Welle and RTV Slovenia.