Chairman Bevanda with Leaders of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of BIH Vjekoslav Bevnada talked in Sarajevo with Secretary-General of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative Fabio Pigliapoco and with Chairman of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative Ivan Orlić on the state of affairs in the Initiative member countries. 

Chairman Bevnada congratulated for the assignment and wished success to the BIH Chairmanship of the Initiative, expressing his hopes that the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative will get the place it deserves in society and that all will draw benefit form tis operation.

„We, the member countries are interconnected in terms of geography, transport, energy, so our interests bound us, so against this  background I will pledge my full support to the work of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative“, Chairman Bevanda said.

Secretary-General Pigliapoco expressed his conviction that the Initiative’s Secretariat will in be in a constant contact with the Council of Ministers of BIH during the BIH Chairmanship term, and underlined that by the end of this year 28 heads of governments will endorse the Macro-region Document, the implementation of which will follow-up early  next year. He noted the political importance of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative, since out of its eight members, four are the EU member countries and other four are EU aspirant countries, and that the vacuum will be hopefully filled in the time ahead.

The Chairman of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative Ivan Orlić said that the BIH Chairmanship of the Initiative comes in time of preparation of the European Union Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian region and that he expects all eight Initiative's members to become the EU members soon. He stressed that it is necessary to act in a longer-term prospective, adding that BIH awaits a huge rehabilitation undertaking in the post-flood period, when he expects support to these efforts to come from all eight members.

BIH assumed the Chairmanship of the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative on June 1, 2014, and it will last until May 31, 2015; the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative members are Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Greece, Italia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Human Rights and Refugees Damir Ljubić.

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