(ANSA) - BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 3 - "If we don't work it out and the EU misses an opportunity to integrate the Western Balkans, we will all lose". That is what Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic said, before the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "In the Balkans we usually hear dissonant stances from the rest of the European Union on the pace of enlargement", said Djukanovic, underlining that integration in the EU "does not depend solely" on the six Balkan countries.

"I'm not skeptical, we've been on the path towards the EU membership for a long time and the idea of a united Europe is the cornerstone, but in this process we are all partners and not 'guinea pigs'", Montenegro's president said, thus asking for "shared solutions" and confirming his commitment to "making the Montenegrin society more and more European". Should the Balkan region fail to join the Union, "this would entail a high risk of bringing in external actors with interests that are very different from ours, and this would risk plunging part of our continent into destabilizing tensions", he reiterated. (ANSA).