Albanian Government Council of Ministers

Prime Minister Edi Rama is on an official two-day visit to Brussels to attend the plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee.

On the second day of his visit, PM Rama held a joint press conference on progress of the European Commission’s new Growth Plan for the Western Balkans with EESC President Oliver Ropke, European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency, and Prime Minister of Montenegro Milojko Spajić

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President of European Economic and Social Committee, Oliver Röpke: Good morning ladies and gentlemen! Dear Vice President, dear prime ministers,

First of all, I would like to welcome you to our press conference here. It is a landmark initiative of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) that we start today. It is now 10 months ago since I took office as President of the EESC, and my first initiative was to strengthen involvement of the candidate countries in our work.

We wanted to become the first EU institution that involves candidate countries in our advisory work.

Now ten months later, I am really proud to say that we in the Committee have unanimously decided to start this project and two days ago we appointed the enlargement candidate countries. Some of them are here and I am really honored and pleased to see you here. It is a great signal that we can now celebrate the start of this initiative.

Over the past few years, the geopolitical context in Europe and around the world has changed dramatically. We have seen that the EU enlargement gained really a momentum, unfortunately linked to the war because of the aggression on Ukraine, but in our initiative we have involved all candidate countries, namely Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, Türkiye, as well as all the Western Balkan countries, including Montenegro and Albania, because I personally think that we can no longer let these countries in the waiting room. We have to really engage and show that although the EU membership must be merit- based, I think that there are a lot of things we can do before to help integrating the candidate countries in our work and especially in the EESC as a civil society body to empower and further strengthen the civil society and social partners in the enlargement countries. So we are now starting a new phase, because this project will start, which means that promises have to be put on track. We are really looking forward to working with you, with the enlargement members and I am convinced that you can bring new initiatives, new views and perspectives from the enlargement countries to the European Union, meaning that this is not a one-way street, because both can benefit from it, including us here in the EESC, and this is why we decided to open doors to involve your representatives in our work.

I must share with you the fact that the response to our call for the enlargement candidate members was really overwhelming as we had more than 600 applications from all candidate countries. It was not easy to find a selection, but we now have a pool of 131 enlargement candidate members and this also shows how vibrant and diverse the civil society is in these countries.

I had the honor to visit some of the candidate countries last month and I was really pleased and amazed by the vibrant civil society in these countries and I really look forward to set this new standard in our house when it comes to gradual integration.

And the last word, I would like to thank all the EU institutions for their great support for this initiative, especially the European Commission, Vice President Jourova, and explicitly also European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who supported this initiative from the very beginning and I hope it will be a success story.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for having us here!

I must say that this is great news coming from a very exemplary body of these complex institutions, which is the European Economic and Social Committee that decided to take very bold steps, basically providing all the candidate countries the opportunity to be part of a community that is made of member states.

I think this is the first great example of how we should foresee the near future and how possibly we should agree with our European Union friends about a different approach on doing things together by allowing us the candidate countries to be part of the spaces of dialogue, interaction and cooperation that this incredible organization provides for all members.

So, having today our countries as full members of this Committee without the right to vote is exactly what the near future should be for the European Union and the Western Balkans that should find the way to make sure that the path towards our full accession is a path of very close cooperation, but also a path of a very organic interaction that should be provided by the European Union and its institutions.

I strongly believe that it is high time for the European Union to realize that the candidate countries in the Western Balkans, but not only, are not only mature enough, but also in a situation when they deserve to be embraced and be brought closer without necessarily be full members, as it is indeed the final goal of this whole process.

What is happening today is a shiny example of what should happen further at other EU levels and bodies.

I strongly believe that what is happening today here should also happen in the European Parliament; it should happen in the European Commission and in the European Council. This is the only way to calm down all the spirits and to infuse a very concrete energy, a very tangible energy, a very useful energy in all the candidate countries and their citizens about the very concrete future of being part of the European Union. Otherwise, we would risk reentering a never ending path of good intentions, of plenty promises, but of no delivery.

In the meantime, I believe that the new Growth Plan is also another very good example of some awareness, a different way of looking to the Western Balkans and other candidate countries and to the future of the European Union itself. I would like to conclude by saying that we are finally seeing that the European Union is much more aware in terms of its deeds and not just its words about the strategic importance of the Western Balkans for the European Union and it is sad that Vladimir Putin was needed to make this happen.

But I strongly believe that we should now keep this momentum, move forward with bold steps and don’t wait for another aggression or another catastrophe to happen to remind us and, most importantly, to remind people in Brussels how important the Western Balkans are for the European Union.

We always say that the European Union is very important for us, but everyone in the European Union should realize –  and do so not only theoretically, but also make sure that this realization becomes practical – that the Western Balkans are as important for the European Union as the latter is for the Western Balkans.

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