The Foreign Secretary will host European partners today (9 October) to focus on preserving security and stability in the Western Balkans, boosting growth and trade, and increasing cooperation in the fight against organised immigration crime.
Yvette Cooper will host the Western Balkans Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Hillsborough Castle to discuss how the UK can support a region where instability can cause a direct effect on the Government’s priorities to protect national security and secure the UK’s borders.
The summit will discuss the importance of building resilience in the Western Balkans to combat the constant flood of Russian hybrid threats aimed at destabilising the region, and fanning ethnic tensions. The Foreign Secretary will unveil a new £4 million project to reinforce cyber defences in the region, and share expertise in countering disinformation and other malign activity from hostile actors.
Ahead of the meeting, the Foreign Secretary will announce the investment of £10 million in innovative programmes to tackle people smuggling in the Western Balkans and other key regions where international cooperation is essential to curb illegal migration.
The funding will support new projects in the Western Balkans, including law enforcement training in Kosovo, stronger border security and help for potential trafficking victims in Serbia.
The summit will also focus on the continuing threat from organised immigration crime networks who are based in the Western Balkans, or use the region as a supply route for smuggling people and equipment into the rest of Europe. Close to 22,000 people transited through Western Balkan to Europe last year.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said:
It is in all our interests to protect security and stability in the Western Balkans, and we must be alive to the full range of threats that our partners in the region are facing, from Russian efforts to revive ethnic tensions, to vile people-smuggling gangs trading in human lives.
International cooperation is vital to boosting our economic growth, protecting our national security, and securing our borders. The partnerships we build abroad make us stronger here at home.
In particular, the support that we are giving our partners in the Western Balkans to tackle people smuggling will have a direct impact on the supply chains and profits of organised immigration crime networks, and reducing the threat that they represent to the UK.
Since taking up her current role a month ago, the Foreign Secretary has been clear that she sees tackling illegal migration as a foreign policy “imperative”, building on new agreements secured with Iraq, France, Germany.
As a result, the department is increasing the number of staff working on the issue of migration, including helping to identify additional targets for the UK’s world-first sanctions regime targeting people-smugglers and their enablers, and progressing negotiations with other countries on the return of people with no right to be in the UK.
Taking place at Hillsborough Castle – the backdrop to the Good Friday Agreement – the UK will use the Summit to share its experiences of the Northern Ireland peace process, as the countries of the Western Balkans seek to continue turning their own history of conflict and division into a successful model of reconciliation and progress.
The meeting lays the groundwork ahead of the Prime Minister hosting Western Balkans leaders in London on 22 October to further support the region on security, growth and migration.
Background:
- The meeting is part of the Berlin Process, an international platform which brings together governments of Western Balkans countries, alongside other European partners. Its aim is to increase regional cooperation, support economic development and accelerate its efforts for closer European alignment in the Western Balkans.
- Attendees at the Western Balkans Summit: Foreign Ministers’ meeting will be representatives from Western Balkans countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia), and European partners (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the EU, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia).
- More information on the Berlin Process can be found here: https://www.berlinprocess.de/
- The Global Irregular Migration and Trafficking in Persons Sanctions Regime is aimed at deterring people smuggling, human trafficking, and instrumentalised migration for the purpose of destabilisation. Further information can be seen here.
- The £10 million figure referenced is the FY 25/26 allocation for migration focused projects within the Integrated Security Fund (ISF). The ISF is a government-wide fund that addresses the highest-priority threats to UK national security.
- In the first year after the General Election, over 35,000 individuals with no legal right to remain in the UK were returned, up 13% from the same period in the year before. The UK-France Treaty, signed in August 2025, is also for the first time allowing the UK to detain and remove people who enter illegally via small boats, blocking their access to the UK asylum system.