BERLIN, October 22. /TASS/. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz believes that the European Union should continue to expand in order to strengthen its sovereignty and positions on the global arena.

"We seek to maintain this momentum of EU enlargement. The EU needs to grow if it wants to assert its sovereignty and to be perceived as a clear factor of power," he told reporters after a summit held in Montenegro as part of the so-called Berlin Process.

The German government’s press service quoted the chancellor as saying that "political will" for European integration "should come from the region itself."

The Berlin process is a mechanism of support for European integration of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and the unrecognized republic of Kosovo. Then German Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated its creation back in 2014.