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Balkan PMs get advice on improving business environment

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Balkan prime ministers listen to business leaders at closed-door meeting.

There’s no free lunch, they say, but prime ministers from the Balkans got lots of free advice at a closed-door lunch with leading businessmen and EBRD President Jean Lemierre. 

Slobodan Vucicevic, CEO of the Serbian coffee maker Grand Coffee was the first to deliver some hard-hitting thoughts about the opportunities and obstacles to doing business in the Balkans. He set the tone of frank reflections from six investors in the Balkan region and two journalists, along with four prime ministers and six ministers. 

They raised issues such as the need to develop capital markets in order to avoid dependency on foreign funds and the need for subsidies to help people buy homes, which in turn would spur employment and growth. They talked about the need for legal certainty, as compared with the indiscriminate application of unclear rules that they often encounter today. They want the reality to fit the rules, so that free trade, for example, is actually operational, with one free trade agreement between neighbouring countries and not dozens of smaller agreements.

Prime ministers from Serbia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Economy Minister of Albania heard them loud and clear. They said they shared the concerns, and were working on many of them. Finance ministers from Slovenia and Bulgaria, offered the advice of those who have trodden the path of reforms required for EU membership. Their message: don’t be afraid of open markets and free trade -- they offer fantastic opportunity.

The CEO of Titan Cement, Dimitrios Papalexopoulos, wanted leaders to ‘talk the talk’, because they can take the lead on how the people of a country think. We all have lessons to learn from the friendships and new mindset that developed between Greece and Turkey when they worked together after the natural catastrophe of earthquakes.

Erhard Busek, the Special Coordinator for the South-east Europe Stability Pact urged leaders to address issues at the local level as well as seeing to national concerns. And, mainly, he said, countries must work as one region.

President Lemierre invited the leaders of countries and enterprises to meet face to face on their mutual ambition of making the Balkans a better place to do business. With the help of tough comments from Austrian writer Paul Lendvai, and Veran Matic, the editor in chief of B92, the Belgrade radio and television station, provocative questions elicited thoughtful responses.

Mr. Lemierre noted that at least one sign of unity of thinking emerged – that everyone around the table referred to ‘the Balkans’ as the place they were talking about, rather than south-eastern Europe or other labels. That, he said, expressed the spirit of the region.

But it was up to Mr Vucicevic to conclude by praising the symbolism of the event that brought leaders from all these countries together. But his praise was just as great for an event that featured prime ministers, yet the first and the last word went to the leaders business.

22 May 2005