-Progressive political parties across Europe gathered in the Congress of the Socialists and Democrats in Berlin, represented by the heads of state and government, European Commissioners, leaders of the PES member parties and other representatives under the motto “With Courage. For Europe.” Prime Minister Edi Rama attended one of the panels that broadly focused on ways to tackle current common challenges, soaring war-driven inflation and energy crisis etc.
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-Mr. Prime Minister, it’s my also honour to share this stage with you and I think it is an honour for all of us. What do you the Prime Minister of Albania think are the priorities for the European cooperation in the years ahead?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Would you please explain why it is your honour?
-It is an honour because… well, this is a real politician. It is an honour because we have been sometimes in zoom meetings actually discussing on the Western Balkans. I always find you and extremely interesting speaker and this is not just to say it on the stage, because you can be very provocative, which I like as a Dutch person. You intend to be very direct, so it is an honour for me to meet you in person.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Ok, let’s say I am convinced now. I was thinking what would be a valuable contribution to this Congress, while coming from a country that is not in the EU, but it is still in the “E” that stands for Europe and being part of this area in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the European Union, but still out of the European Union, that is the Western Balkans, and I thought that may be it can be not a bad idea to try and convey here the message that what started a few days ago or a few weeks ago in Prague with this attempt to unite Europe beyond the borders of the European Union and include countries that in one way or another are connected to not simply the fate of Europe, but also to how the European Union moves forward.
It is still a big question. Yes, this Community is needed. We have noticed it, especially in times that are becoming increasingly commonplace, bringing more and more common challenges, but how this Community will be working in a way that at the end everyone can see results, how this Community can be functioning in a way that when it comes to the huge common challenges no one is left behind and nobody’s contribution to the European common position is not taken for granted.
We have had a horrible experience with the European Union when the pandemic started and when the European Union hastily gathered and under the pressure and big anxiety to start the coronavirus vaccination campaign and we were completely forgotten in the initial row of the vaccination.
Therefore, we had to watch how others around us were starting to vaccinate their elderly, their nurses and doctors, while we the Western Balkan people, although being so faithful and so loyal to Europe, we were like fish out of water. And what were we supposed and could do? We had to run to find vaccines exactly where the narrative of the European Union suggests the danger comes from, namely China, Russia and Türkiye.
And, in the case of Albania, for example, if it was not for Türkiye and President Erdoğan, we wouldn’t have been able to vaccinate anyone for quite a long time. The same goes for Serbia and China, and somehow also Russia.
So, this was really an extremely frightening moment, because we could see in a very hard situation that the European Union was not there for us, it was not there for our people, it was not there for a matter of life and death.
-For those who are more interested in your specific ideas on that, I can recommend your opinion piece last week on Politico.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: This was not all about what I want to say, because it was a compromise between me and Mark Rutte, and as such it was an Albanian-Dutch cooperation, which was really fascinating for me and for us, because it was just a few years ago when the Netherlands was the toughest and the most impenetrable force preventing us from opening the EU accession negotiations, but then they won elections and they were fine and they can see us now differently.
-I am really happy for that.
-Mr. Prime Minister, you also raised some issues about the fact that Europe was not always delivering and you think that in the months ahead there should be more solidarity, for instance when it comes to the energy issue with EU candidate countries like Albania. There have been recently cyberattacks against Albania. What in the specific issue of security is where you see more European cooperation should be taking place?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Yes, thank you for the question!
However, first of all, in few words I would tell you that we were attacked very heavily by the Islamic Republic of Iran in an attempt to wipe out our data completely and completely destroy our online service delivery system, which is a very advanced one in Albania, and it was just yesterday that the new United Nations’ Digital Compass Development ranked Albania eighth in Europe, I mean in whole Europe and not just in our Europe without the “U”, and nineteenth in the world, meaning that Albania has a quite sophisticated system of the online public services that is now part of the life of our citizens with a lot of benefits in terms of eliminating wait time, eliminating long queues, eliminating briberies.
They actually hit a very strategic part of our daily functioning. The reason of the attack has to do with the fact that Albania has sheltered several thousands of Iranian opposition members, because we are a bit different when it comes to the solidarity with people in need and it is not by coincidence that Albania is the only country in the whole Europe to have a larger Jewish population after the World War 2 than before the War, because Jews in Albania were protected and there is no record of a single Jew having been handed over to the Nazis.
And then when the crazy ethnic cleansing machinery of Slobodan Milosevic started its very dirty and bloody job in Kosova, nearly a million people were displace and half of them, half a million people were provided shelter in Albania. And most recently, when the pullout from Afghanistan was quite a messy story, we again opened our doors to some thousands of Afghani evacuees that nobody was willing to take in, although they were working for us. It was really an embarrassing situation to witness that NATO member states that used these individuals as translators, drivers, engineers, experts, and that encouraged women to show up and speak, stand up for themselves, they had this terrible idea, not only to leave the country, but also leave without them. So, we couldn’t save all of them, but I am very proud because we saved a lot of them.
We did the same with the Iranians. Nobody was willing to take them in. They were being killed on weekly basis in the “Liberty Camp” in Iraq and therefore we decided to open our doors to them. But this comes at a price and the price was really very scary.
Although the attack failed to hack and wipe out all the data, we succeeded in restoring the system back to work. However, we have received some statements of solidarity, but we are seeing nothing more than that by far and I don’t want to turn it into a matter of financing, but it is obviously about financing too.
When it comes to cyber, I think this is just the beginning and I think Albania and everyone else will face more attacks and I find it completely surreal that Europe has yet to build a common data system and a common response system when it comes to security.
-Mr. Prime Minister, this is what I hate about moderating, because you get just two minutes.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: You should never ask for time limits if you want to talk to Balkan men. Never!
-I know I have to learn a lot from you.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: We come from a tradition of a lot of talking and it looks like Margaret Thatcher has been thinking about us when she said: “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”
