Prime Minister Edi Rama today attended the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) meeting in Brussels, with Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina being admitted for first time as member countries, where work will also include the new Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, a long-awaited mechanism that boosts funding for countries in the region before the come European Union member states and enhances the region’s economic integration into the EU single market.
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Corina Stratulat, European Policy Center Director: Good morning and very warm welcoming also from my side to this celebratory session of the European Economic and Social Committee, dedicated to the launch of the enlargement candidate members initiative that was so eloquently presented by President Ropke just now.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: First of all, I would like to thank you for saving us from the opening remarks. It is really great and I very much hope this will serve as an example courage, strategic understanding and real interaction between the European Union and the Western Balkans. So, chapeau to the Committee. We are certainly delighted to see our fellow citizens be members of this Committee and as I already earlier noted at our press conference, I very much wish that this will help the more bureaucratic Brussels to move forward much more courageously and to somehow imitated what this Committee is doing by including us as its active members and just by making it clear that when it comes to vote, our members won’t enjoy a voting right.
But this is not a big deal. Anyway, the real part, the real work and real communication will happen. This is also what we wish to see happening in the European Parliament, this is what we want to see happening with the European Commission, and this is what we want to see in all corridors of this incredible industrial complex of bureaucracy. Let’s hope that this will happen.
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Corina Stratulat, European Policy Center Director: Let me start with the first question for all of our distinguished guests. Since it seeks to complement the new Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, as we have already heard being mentioned several times, and since it follows on the idea of mainstreaming more and more the gradual integration of the enlargement countries into the EU structures, how do you think that this enlargement candidate members initiative of the European Economic and Social Committee can break the ground for others? How do you think that it can support you in achieving some of your European objectives in short and medium-term? Prime Minister Rama, maybe I start from you this time, if you don’t mind.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I believe that it is very clear and simple how this approach can change fundamentally the nature of our relation with Europe and how such a change can practically open the path towards – I don’t actually like the word “enlargement”, because it is eventually not about enlargement, but it is about unification, because I do always think about how central we, the Western Balkans are for Europe’s body. We are right in the stomach of Europe. So, how could you possibly enlarge the stomach? You just integrate it into the body. It is not that we are looking for an obese European Union. We are looking for a healthy European Union.
This is all about a state-building and democratic institutions formation process and you have to go through it. You can’t fast-track a driving license course, because if you are to do so, you may obtain the license, but you may crash the car.
On one hand, we have to understand it, our people have to understand it and it is about an extremely difficult and nerve-wracking homework, but we have to do it. And we have to do this homework and deliver, not because we have to please Brussels, Berlin or Paris, we have to do it because this is the only way to make sure that the next generations will have a state, which meets standards of a EU member state in the way it works. It is the only way to separate the future from the past and to define the state’s role as role of institutions and as role of individuals, persons and people with a certain power. Therefore, we should not rush. And we should not ask to do so.
On the other hand, it is equally important that the European Union to not use the phrase “you are not yet ready” as an excuse for not looking at it as a very important part of the whole puzzle. While we do homework, the EU should open all its doors to us, just like here. What’s happening here is exactly that. That’s why I came here. I said: “Well, this is great.” It is so important symbolically, but it is also somehow like sabotage from within.
This Committee is working like an agent of change by sabotaging the bureaucratic way of thinking and it is making a disruption that I hope will be seen and it will help everyone else to realize that nothing terrible is happening. It is quite the opposite. So, I very much wish that the European Parliament will open its doors to allow some of our people to take seats there and follow entire process, but at the end they won’t vote and this is not a drama.
The same goes for the European Commission, the same goes for the EU Directorates.
Corina Stratulat, European Policy Center Director: Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister Rama.
