The President of the European Council, António Costa, officially commenced a high-stakes diplomatic tour across all six Western Balkan nations on Monday, June 1, 2026. The rapid regional deployment serves as a direct political prelude to the highly anticipated EU-Western Balkans Summit scheduled later this week.
The diplomatic itinerary is designed to address bilateral bottlenecks, evaluate rule-of-law reforms, and signal Brussels’ renewed focus on regional stabilization amid shifting geopolitical realities in Europe.
Itinerary and Key Stops
President Costa’s diplomatic calendar maps out consecutive high-level meetings leading up to the regional summit:
- June 1 (Sarajevo): The tour launched in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Costa is meeting with state institutional leaders to navigate the country’s ongoing constitutional and integration challenges.
- June 2 (Tirana & Skopje): Costa will travel to Albania to meet with top state officials and engage with students at the newly established College of Europe Tirana Campus. Later that afternoon, he will pivot to North Macedonia for leadership talks in Shkup.
- June 3 (Prishtina): The European Council President will arrive in Kosovo for comprehensive consultations with state institutional leaders and heads of major political parties.
- June 4–5 (Belgrade & Tivat): Costa will conclude his individual state visits in Serbia before heading to Montenegro to join over 30 European and regional heads of state.
The Climax: Tivat Summit 2026
The diplomatic tour will culminate on June 5, 2026, in the coastal town of Tivat, Montenegro, which is hosting the EU-Western Balkans Summit—a format previously convened in Tirana, Albania.
Under the core theme of “Shared Prosperity and Stability of the European Union and the Western Balkans,” the summit is expected to move past rhetorical promises of enlargement. With heavyweights like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in attendance, Costa’s tour is strategically timed to iron out regional friction points, ensuring a unified agenda focused on economic integration, energy diversification, and alignment with EU foreign policy.
