Prime Minister Edi Rama’s interview with German media WELT:

 

The Ukraine war has also put the Balkans on heightened alert. Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama explains why it is dangerous for the EU not to admit the Western Balkan countries, and why he thinks criticism against Germany’s past Russia policy is unfair. 

Albania has been for years waiting for talks on its accession to the European Union (EU) to finally begin, but that hasn’t happened so far. During his Berlin visit this week, Prime Minister Edi Rama called for Germany’s support in Brussels. In an interview, the 57-year-old explains why the Balkans are of fundamental importance to Europe – and what the war in Ukraine means for the region.

WELT: Mr. Rama, Chancellor Angela Merkel has always advocated EU accession of the Balkan countries. You met her successor Olaf Scholz this week. Do you think he will move on this direction?

PM Edi Rama: It’s quite interesting how similar Angela and Olaf Scholz are. We met in same office as then and it was as if I was there with the same person; the same posture, the way he listens in a very respectful and effective way, a lot of substance in just a few words, a subtle smile. The Chancellor voiced readiness to speed up Albania’s EU accession process. He seemed like in a way Angela Merkel regained her strength.

WELT: In an interview with WELT four years ago, you stated it was paradoxical that Albania had yet to become an EU member. To date, the accession negotiations have not started. Where does the problem lie?

PM Edi Rama: I’ve learned it the hard way: it’s not enough to love the EU, be devoted to it, to be and to do whatever the EU asks you in order to get its consent to marriage. Because it is not about us, but about them. The European Commission has been granted the green light for four years, yet someone in the EU Council keeps saying “No” and the process is still on hold.

WELT: Why is this happening?

PM Edi Rama: This happens for example anytime when national elections near in a bloc member. Some governments of certain EU member states are hostages to the national-populist narratives – such as that if the EU is to welcome a new member, more and more will join. It’s a tactical manoeuvre because they are afraid of the public opinion in their countries.

WELT: Fighting corruption is one of the prerequisites for EU membership. In the International Transparency’s Corruption Perceptions, Albania ranked 110 out of 180 countries. Is your country really ready for the EU?

PM Edi Rama: I don’t trust that transparency… – whatever that is – not for a single second. We have made so much progress. Just one example: Albania now has 95 percent of its public services digitized. When I joined politics, none of the public services were handled and delivered digitally. People had to queue for hours to obtain a document. Everything was corrupt. How can that our ranking didn’t improve despite all this performance? Let’s also not forget the justice system reform.

WELT: The EU discusses joint debts. It is against this background too that some countries hesitate to take in an economically weak country like Albania, especially after the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine …

PM Edi Rama: Albania may not be rich, but one should not forget that it, like all countries in the Balkans, Albania is small. The Balkans are geo-strategically critically important. It is dangerous for the EU that the Balkan countries are not bloc members; the EU would be safer and stronger with them in. For the time being, the EU is the only geographical reality having an internal border; it is like a man walking around with an open wound. This makes the EU vulnerable and needs this wound close to protect itself. For example, during the 2015 refugee crisis, people came from Turkey to Greece to the EU, then left the Union again via North Macedonia, entered the EU via Serbia and then via Croatia. If the Balkan countries were to be EU members, it would have been much easier to curb the wave of refugees, because the Balkans could have been used as a sort of a buffer zone. The (asylum) applications could have been processed there and people would have been prevented from entering the EU in a disorderly manner.

WELT: What if the EU – to put it in your own words – was never to agree to marry Albania? When is your patience exhausted and you search for a new partner, maybe a little further East…?

PM Edi Rama: If the EU doesn’t agree to marry us, we will grow old and will never be married. We will be Europe’s nuns. But we will never give up efforts to marry the EU only and nobody else.

WELT: Let’s talk about the war in Ukraine. Albania imports many raw materials both from Ukraine and Russia. Fuel and wheat prices have skyrocketed, leading to mass demonstrations last month. How are you going to cut your country’s dependence on such materials? 

PM Edi Rama: We are encountering difficulties with the rising prices, but we are now working closely with our Importers and partner countries to ensure an increase in supplies. There is an important bridge with Serbia, which provides wheat supplies to Albanian companies for many years now. We have created supply stocks; we have granted our food importers a guarantee fund that they can purchase more supplies than usual and we will face no problems in the medium term. Prices are still high, but no longer skyrocketing. We have also introduced a “social stability package”, a set of measures and state budget funds to offset the price increase for pensioners and other social vulnerable groups, as well as subsidies for public transport companies and farmers. These steps calm everyone down. 

WELT: With the Ukraine war, Putin’s seemingly unlimited thirst for power is drawing closer towards the Balkans. Do you think Russia could destabilize the region?

PM Edi Rama: The region is vulnerable because Russian influence is very strong – not in Albania, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and especially in Serbia.

WELT: Serbia has not condemned the invasion of Ukraine yet and is showing pro-Russian inclination. In the meantime, Albania maintains close ties with Serbia, for example through the Open Balkans free trade initiative. How far would Serbia have to move towards Russia so that Albania can end cooperation with it? 

PM Edi Rama: Serbia is not moving towards Russia. On the contrary, strangely enough it sided with the West in condemning Russian aggression in the UN General Assembly. The fact that Serbia voted three times against Russia is a very good sign. If Serbia had done the opposite, it would have been a strong blow to our cooperation.

WELT: How do you see Germany’s position regarding the Ukraine war? 

PM Edi Rama: Let me be frank with you: The criticism levelled against Angela Merkel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, I think is wrong. I think they did the right thing by communicating with Russia and Putin. There are good historical and political reasons for embarking on this direction. It is deplorable that they failed to fully enforce the Minsk Agreement to eventually prevent the current escalation, but I wouldn’t blame them. Not at all.

WELT: Critics say if Germany were to take a tougher stance on Russia, the situation wouldn’t have gone this far.

PM Edi Rama: I don’t agree with them. It’s not fair; and I don’t remember any critics voicing their concerns so loudly before the war. I do not think that Merkel or Steinmeier were soft on Putin. They have never shied away from condemning Russia whenever necessary.

WELT: However, the still insisted on building Nord Stream 2 project even after the Crimea annexation.

PM Edi Rama: I stick to my remarks. And to be honest, I think time will prove me right and all those who are hard on them now are wrong.

WELT: What do you mean?

PM Edi Rama: I mean that the escalation in Ukraine has nothing to do with Nord Stream 2 or with the fact that Germany was soft on Russia. It’s about an escalation of the loss of power in Moscow. It is in the nature of these types of regimes to go that way. If a large country like that spends a lot of money to become a military world power, while economically it is poor, it will definitely use its military might. Because it must show that the danger is real and going to wars is an existential thing. Our communist regime spent a lot of money to build half a million bunkers so that we could felt under threat, while Albania was as poor as it could be.

It is now useless to argue that we shouldn’t help Ukraine to protect its airspace, because this could be understood by Putin as a pretext. Dictators like Putin, Hitler and Stalin do not need an excuse to take any actions. They make up a pretext themselves whenever they need one. The West should not be afraid; we should provide Ukraine with airplanes and tanks so they can protect their own skies and land.