Prime Minister Edi Rama is in the United Arab Emirates as part of his participation in Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2025 (ADSW), where today he addressed the global summit attended by heads of state, world leaders, senior policymakers, and industry experts.
In his speech, the Prime Minister shared details about the strategic agreement between Albania, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates. “I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that we will soon be signing a very important strategic agreement, together with Italy and the United Arab Emirates, concerning the underwater cables mentioned earlier. This will be a crucial tool, not only for transmitting renewable energy from Albania to Italy, but also for strengthening Albania’s position as a key player in the region, based on its 100% renewable energy production,” he stated.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Very honorable participants and dear friends. It’s with great honor that I take the floor to present what is shaping not just Albania’s future but specifically what in this moment in time Albania’s future is being shaped by advancing clean energy and strengthening international partnerships specifically with the United Arab Emirates.
Let me express my deepest gratitude to His Highness the President of UAE, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed for his continuous support, his special care and the inspiration he has been for me and for us in this way forward where together with and thanks to the United Arab Emirates and its incredible know-how in the matter, we are diversifying and transforming Albania’s energy sector. Let me inform you that Albania’s electricity generation is, as we speak, 100 percent from renewable generation, and Albania’s renewable energy share in final energy demand amounts to 44 percent. This makes Albania part of the top list of the European countries together with the Scandinavian countries in terms of how much the renewable energy share in final energy demand is a number.
On the other hand, I want to take this opportunity to inform you that we are today soon signing a very important strategic agreement together with Italy and the United Arab Emirates for the subsea cable that is mentioned to be a very, very important tool, not just for transmitting renewable energy from Albania to Italy, but also for increasing Albania’s capacity as a key player in the region based on its 100 percent renewable production.
This very important step for the region and also for Europe would not have been possible without the significant collaboration with the United Arab Emirates and without the particular attention of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and also without someone that I want to mention because he has been instrumental in guiding us in this journey, Dr. Sultan Al-Jabbar. Without taking longer, I want to underline that Albania’s partnership with the United Arab Emirates in the energy sector is very, very important for a region where a lot of wars, a lot of conflicts, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of misunderstandings have shaped so far our past and where the collaboration and the common desire to be part of the big European family has to be sustained with concrete initiatives and with concrete steps to overcome the past. And in that regard, the collaboration started between the state-owned company of energy generation cash in Albania and Masdar, which aims to develop up to three gigs of renewable generation to be delivered through a well-organized and integrated transmission grid in the European market. Of course, starting from the region is a very, very important contribution, not just to the energy, but to peace and collaboration in the region in a way that we want all together, as I said, to end by uniting with the European Union family.
Let me finish by expressing my gratitude also to someone that just entered the room and you all rightly stood up, the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who is here to participate in this fantastic week of sustainability, but also to bless this very important agreement between Italy, United Arab Emirates and Albania.
Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni: Well, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I have accepted with great pleasure President Mohammed bin Zayed and the United Arab Emirates Government’s invitation to join this summit. As I deem it very helpful and extremely valuable to multiply the opportunities for debate, for dialogue on the best solutions we can put at the service of such an historic challenge as energy transition is. Italy is traditionally linked to Western Balkan nations, as my friendship with Prime Minister Edi Rama shows.
And over time, these bonds have also resulted in energy infrastructure projects. I’m referring, for example, to the power interconnection stretching for 430 kilometers along the Adriatic seabed and linking Italy to Montenegro and the Balkan region, a strategic infrastructure which we aim to strengthen and make even more efficient and competitive. And we intend to pursue this direction. So I am remarkably glad, as edited already, to announce here the signing of a tripartite strategic partnership framework to launch an equally ambitious project between the two shores of the Adriatic. With His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Prime Minister Edi Rama, two good friends of mine, two good friends of Italy, today we are going to attend the signing of an extremely important commitment to implement a new energy interconnection for producing green power in Albania and exporting part of that power to Italy thanks to an undersea cable across the Adriatic Sea.
We strongly believe in this project involving our three governments as well as our private sector and grid operators. And I am personally proud of this initiative because it tangibly shows new forms of cooperation can be built even among seemingly distant partners, at least geographically speaking. Partners who, however, are able to see the chessboard as a whole and not just the quadrant of that chessboard that apparently concerns them most closely.
Thus, this initiative is a concrete step toward a truly global interconnection from Asia to the Gulf, from North Africa to Europe capable of supplying energy bidirectional. So colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, we know we are living in a particularly complex era marked by momentous transformations. We now have a choice to make. We can either suffer these transformations while staying idle or we can interpret them as opportunities. I strongly believe we should choose the second path and follow it courageously and visionary with no fear to dare, because as the economist Julian Simon said, the main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge. The brakes are our lack of imagination. Thank you very much
