Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the presentation of SHKO, the Consular Service Online Platform:
Hello everyone!
Let me begin with a quote by Faik Konica who said: “You have to be away from Albania to understand the power, sweetness and beauty of the word “Albania”.” But you should go to a consulate to understand how heavy this word is, when you need help from Albania.
The truth is that just as in any service, even in the consular service we inherited a disastrous situation, in terms of quality of the service to our citizens, and their infinite suffering in every contact or attempt to contact our consulates.
Today I believe that we are entitled to feel proud of the fact that what is gone is gone, but what comes will not resemble what is gone, like a tedious repetition in 25 consecutive years of the same sad story of foot-dragging and higher costs, despite the changes of government in Tirana. Today, we have in the broadest sense of the word, a country that is much more advanced in terms of digital services, and e-Albania, a service portal which currently provides more than 1,000 services of this kind for the citizens, for the enterprise, and the administration.
Let me give you a reference point. A little more than three years ago there were only three such services, while today there are over 1,000 services of this kind. Part of these services is the consular service, now provided thanks to a very commendable effort of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which by nature is a conservative institution. The Ministry has overcome a significant barrier of a tradition that weighed heavily in the decision making of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, until the moment he committed himself to promote and advance this project, the success of which is directly related to the 1.5 million Albanian citizens living abroad, and to the quality of service that Albania provides them.
The provision of this service also fulfils one of the goals that has been strongly emphasized in the Diaspora Summit, to bring Albania closer to many people who live abroad and who need it. There are 36 online consular services with simple procedures, fully standardized and unified on a single platform. In order for our fellow citizens living outside Albania to get an idea, I will bring to your attention two of these services that they have received for 25 years in the form of a persistent torture: the issuing of passports and the issuing of travel authorizations.
Until yesterday, in order to be issued a passport abroad, Albanian citizens had to travel hundreds of kilometres to the consulates to get information about the required documents, and after submitting them they were informed that some papers were missing, or some others were incomplete, then they had their fingerprints taken, and eventually were issued the passport. Now there is only one contact with the consulate, and it is only for the procedure, hence they have their fingerprints taken, and immediately obtain the passport. The rest of the procedure is done online from home. So, once they leave home and go to the consulate, citizens know that they will not have to wait in tortuous queues, and that they will be back home together with their passport.
No contact with the consulate is required to obtain a travel authorization. The whole procedure is done online from home, and the document is delivered to your homes. You don’t have to waste a single minute, any litre of fuel, any cell of your nervous system to deal with a procedure that for 25 years has been a torture within an organized system of “tortures”.
On the other hand, it is very important to emphasize that the total cost of consular services will be reduced drastically. Some of these services that until yesterday had high costs, today are provided for free. The costs of the remaining services will have a drastic decrease because these services won’t require human or material resources, but will be delivered with just a single click.
I want to emphasize that the challenge of challenges for us is to make sure that all citizens residing abroad will participate in the most important process of democratic life, the elections. But just as for the consular services that required months and years since the moment they were announced, – we would have liked to provide these services since the first day, but they had to go through the labyrinths of the registers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of documents, records and procedures scattered all over the place, in order to crease a basis on which the whole service system is built, – in order to guarantee the turnout in the elections of the Albanians living abroad, we need to register the Albanians abroad.
We are the only country in Europe – I don’t know if we have a “colleague” of this level in the world, but we don’t have one in Europe – which hasn’t registered its own people. We don’t know where they are, how many they are, or what needs they have. Without this registration, it is impossible for us to include all Albanians in the voting process.
The process has started. Registration has started in the country because we are a country with a specific feature in the big family of European countries, be their “EU or just “E”, and this is that we have in the country some migrants who are registered somewhere but live somewhere else. And I wouldn’t exaggerate, if I told you that this is another specific Albanian category inherited from 25 years of chaos, where people are registered somewhere but live somewhere else. Just think of the chaos we have inherited, and how harmful this chaos is to all internal systems of the state system, ranging from the most basic payment system of the power and water bills, to the system of other obligations, the security system, and so on. Therefore this overall registration, which has started and is taking place intensively, and will be extended across the territory where the Albanians live through online applications, it will give us the possibility sooner than later to include the Albanians living abroad in the democratic process, so that they can vote from where they live, and not be forced to travel to Albania to vote. Of course, this will take its time, just as the full synergy of consular services between Albania and Kosovo will take its time.
I’m very pleased to welcome to this event our friends from Kosovo because these services, which will become integrated services, will affect the quality of services for Albanian citizens of Kosovo. I believe that in this regard, we will have sooner than later not only joint consular services, but joint embassies. We won’t have to spend twice for the infrastructure, for the people or for digital systems, if we join assets and human resources to serve Albanian citizens of Albania and of Kosovo from a single window.
In this regard, the conservative line of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has shown a very reasonable flexibility, and I am convinced that sooner than later we will be able to have a unified representation and service. If somebody sees this as Greater Albania, this is their problem. This is not Greater Albania. This is a drastic reduction of the costs, and at the same time it is a drastic approximation of the people with each other. If others want to join us and have joint Balkan consulates, they are welcome! We are ready to accept all, without distinction of religion, region, language and idea!
Thank you!
