The Western Balkans Road Summit, “Shaping the future: safe, smart and sustainable roads” brought together the transport ministers from countries in the region, representatives of the European Commission, international organizations, regional institutions, road sector practitioners and industry representatives in Tirana  on Tuesday to discuss joint strategic projects that will Western Balkan countries closer to each other.

Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the summit, underlining that the process of delivering on strategic projects has ushered in a new phase thanks to the European support under the Economic and Investment Plan for the Western Balkans, as well as thanks to a much bigger synergy within the region itself to join forces in view of the future.

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First and foremost, I would like to welcome you all to Tirana, both those coming from our region or those coming from our Europe.

It is a day that starts now here with transport, road safety, sustainable development of our entire transport network and will for me go on in Ohrid with another Open Balkans summit, in a bid to move as fast as possible towards delivering pm the free movement of people, goods, capital, services and implementation of the four freedoms of the European Union in this region as soon as possible. The four freedoms of the European Union in the Western Balkans are undoubtedly vital for us and they are definitely vital for the security in this region, vital for peace and conflict resolution in this part of ​​Europe. 

We are already in an advanced stage of the work on construction of the Blue Corridor, as work is now underway on construction of one of the segments of this Corridor and final procedures are being conducted to launch international tenders for construction of other segments and we are very much confident that fruits of this huge construction project will be yielded within this third term in office, if not completion of this whole important highway project.

I very much hope that the European Union will support Montenegro, because if construction of the segment linking Croatia with Albania via Montenegro won’t progress so that the entire Blue Corridor project completes concurrently, the significance of this corridor as a corridor of the European transport network will certainly be lost.

Meanwhile, we are finalizing the major project on construction of the new seaport in Durres, which is practically designed to serve as the port of the whole Western Balkan region and it will definitely ensure much higher accessibility and absolutely different conditions and more modern standards, European Union standards for goods throughout the region and beyond. This combined with Durres-Prishtina rail link after having unblocked Tirana-Durres railway project, as well as the Prishtina Dry Port, a project we will present at the next joint session of the governments of our countries in end of June, will give a whole fresh impetus to the whole region.

Concluding, I would like to point out that it is very important for us to finalize the integrated traffic management centre as soon as possible this year and start implementation of the smart roads project with the first 200 kilometres, a project we will go on with year after the year and we have the ambition to complete it all in a reasonable time span.

The support of the European Union, the support of the European Commission, the assistance from European financial institutions is absolutely irreplaceable along the path we have embarked on and where we are seeking to arrive.

The only thing I would like to say and I would like all the friends coming from Brussels or from the West to always remember is that we all possibly waste less time because we have no time to actually waste.

Meanwhile, after discussing projects on roads and bridges here in this indoor hall, you will have the opportunity to enjoy Tirana at nighttime. 

Thank you very much!