Foreign Ministers from six Balkan countries meet in the Albanian port city of Durres to coordinate ahead of the upcoming Paris Summit. Ministers from Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia will discuss regional infrastructure projects, youth cooperation and the migrant crisis together with European Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Slovakian Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who chairs the Visegrad group.
The Paris Summit comes following similar meetings in Berlin in 2014 and Vienna in 2015, after an initiative raised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to move Balkan countries toward joint cooperation. The focus of Merkel's initiative is to promise development funds for projects that Balkan countries will jointly approve and promote, and that would help overcome historic differences with mutually benefitial growth projects.