Joint press point with Prime Minister Edi Rama and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels:
NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg:
Prime Minister Rama, dear Edi,
Welcome back to NATO Headquarters!
Albania contributes to NATO’s multinational forces in Latvia and in Bulgaria, and you help us to deter any aggression against any NATO allied country. You also contribute to NATO’s KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The Western Balkans is of strategic importance to NATO.
And we appreciate Albania’s commitment to promoting stability and cooperation across the region.
We also agreed to invite Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
And I commend Albania for ratifying the Accession Protocols for both countries so quickly. Thank you so much!
Prime Minister Edi Rama:
Thank you very much dear Jens!
It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to be back and be provided the opportunity to share some opinions with you after the Madrid Summit, which, as you already underlined, was indeed a historic moment for the Trans-Atlantic Alliance in response to the dangers to European security due to the Russia’s war of choice and with the adoption of important decisions to transform and strengthen the Alliance and ensure that NATO continues to preserve peace, prevent conflict and defend the allied nations and values of Alliance.
On the other hand, I am proud that the Albanian parliament became one of the first allied parliaments to ratify Finland’s and Sweden’s accession protocols, just few days after the protocols were signed by the allied ambassadors.
We firmly stand in full solidarity with Ukraine and of course it goes without even saying that our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, within the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, is as firm as ever.
On the other hand, it is important that we continue our conversation vis-à-vis the situation, as well as the obligations we have in the Western Balkans to exactly prevent every escalation and prevent every bad influence become a trouble for our region.
In our allied capacity and as an EU candidate country, we will continue to play our traditional role in support of the regional peace, reconciliation and, of course, stability.
While the new strategic concept we have just endorsed underscores the strategic importance of the Western Balkans to NATO, we very much believe that it is very important to do a permanent dialogue work with all the Western Balkan countries, including Serbia, which is not part of our alliance, but still it is part of our region.
On the other hand, I had again the chance to tell you what I already mentioned in the Summit, namely the need to consider Kosovo’s involvement in the Partnership for Peace, although we know there are some political constraints from some allies and we know that this is a consensual body. However, with the times we are living in, it is really – in my humble view – it would be really wise to reconsider.
And the last but not least, I am very thankful that you also had the readiness to dedicate us a little time in our conversation to introduce you our ambition to add another important value to our Alliance’s infrastructure and logistics by putting at NATO disposal a state-of-the-art naval base, which will be a clean sheet and a place where we can not only build, but also build considering the challenges of our time, from the climate change to environment protection and to all the rest.
Thank you for that too and it is always a pleasure to be back here and it always helps to go back with full and energy and continue to serve this holy Alliance.
