The European Union launched membership negotiations on Tuesday with Albania and North Macedonia -- a long-delayed step towards joining the bloc. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warmly congratulated prime ministers Edi Rama of Albania and Dimitar Kovacevski of Macedonia. "This is what your citizens have been waiting for so long and have been working for so hard, and this is what they deserve," she said. The process of joining what is today a 27-member bloc could still take years, but the formal step marks a small victory for the candidates. "It is a great satisfaction that, after 17 years today, we are finally starting the negotiations," said Kovacevksi, whose country faced many hurdles, including a forced name change, on the path towards the EU. "We are opening new perspectives for our country and for the citizens and steadily but surely we are joining the large European family." Rama, whose country applied for membership in 2009, admitted that the talks might take a while. "We know it's not the beginning of the end, it's just the end of the beginning," he said, paraphrasing British premier Winston Churchill's comment in 1942 -- three years before the end...