The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has been elected at the head of this institution for a new five-year term, will gather the leaders of the Western Balkan countries at a working lunch in Brussels on September 19.

With this meeting, she wants to prove that even in the new mandate, she will pay special attention to this region and the EU enlargement process in general.

However, the main purpose of this meeting is to discuss the "reform and growth agendas", which almost all the countries of the Western Balkan region have submitted to the European Commission, as a precondition to receive the first payments from the Growth Plan for the Balkans Western, approved by the EU in May of this year.

Von der Leyen has been personally engaged in the promotion of this plan, while it has also been supported by the European Parliament and member countries in the EU Council.

According to sources in the EU, von der Leyen's meeting with the leaders of the Western Balkan countries will be a good opportunity to see where these countries have reached with their preparations to realize the goals of this plan.

Each country had to prepare a reform agenda, based on the preliminary recommendations of the EU bodies.

Five countries in the region have already done this, while Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only one, which, for internal political reasons, has not yet done so.

Kosovo, meanwhile, was among the first countries to submit its plan to the European Commission.

Expectations in the EU were that, in mid-September, the European Commission would approve these agendas of the countries of the region. It was expected that this would happen even before the September 19 meeting, but the process has been postponed to October.

As an unofficial reason, the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet submitted its plan is mentioned. And, considering that local elections will soon take place in this country, he is not expected to do this until October.

These delays may affect, then, that the goal of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU, that the first payments to the most advanced countries, be made before the end of this year, is not realized.

According to an unofficial estimate, Kosovo will be able to benefit over 880 million euros from the Growth Plan. Over 250 million will be allocated to Kosovo as money without return, while the rest in the form of affordable loans.

The calculation for the financial amount that will be due to each country is based on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the number of inhabitants and some other criteria.

But, during the presentation of this plan, the countries of the region were clearly told that if they do not carry out the reforms after one or two years, then the amount will be distributed to other countries.

Through the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, the European Union plans to allocate around 6 billion euros to the countries of this region in the period from 2024 to 2027.

Of this amount, two billion will be grants from the EU without return, while the rest will be in the form of favorable loans.

The goal is to help economic growth and, in this way, accelerate the European integration process of this region.

Beneficiaries of these funds are all the countries of the region: Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

The plan also aims to promote regional cooperation and the development of the common market in the region, which would gradually be integrated into the common market of the European Union.

This plan, according to EU officials, is in no way intended to create an alternative to EU enlargement, but to make the membership of these countries in the EU easier.

In the EU, they continue to recall that for the use of financial resources from the Growth Plan, the countries of the region must fulfill several conditions, the main of which are related to the rule of law and ensuring procedures for financial control according to European standards.

For Kosovo and Serbia, progress on the road to the normalization of relations is also mentioned as a specific condition - which includes their constructive engagement in the implementation of all agreements reached in the dialogue mediated by the European Union.

If there will be no progress in the normalization of relations, according to diplomats in the EU, the countries that will be identified as non-constructive, may have consequences through the blocking of payments from the Growth Plan.

Kosovo is currently under several EU punitive measures - due to tensions in the Serb-majority northern part - which include the suspension of payments from the EU's Instruments of Pre-Accession (IPA).

The Growth Plan is separate and is not included in the IPA.

The Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, as a package of 6 billion euros, is considered its most ambitious plan for this region.

The amount of nearly 900 million euros for Kosovo will also be the largest amount that it receives from the EU in a special package./REL