Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the first regional conference on youth cooperation, where the opening in Tirana of the Regional Youth Cooperation Office was promoted:
Good morning everyone!
Welcome here in Tirana on this remarkable day, December 8, which is Youth Day and a national holiday related to the 8th December of 26 years ago when the student movement against the old regime started.
Today, we crown a process that started some time ago in the framework of the Berlin process, where at the initiative of Chancellor Merkel, all senior representatives of the region gathered in Berlin from where a new and overall commitment came to life to give peace in the region a new quality.
Part of this effort was also the launch of this office on the basis of inspiring model of the Franco-German youth cooperation which practically played a terrific role in the process of reconciliation and interaction between the two countries after World War II.
Not formally, I want to express gratitude to our German and French friends who generously offered us their support, their experience and their knowledge for this process, and who have actually accompanied throughout this period our Ministry of Social Welfare and Youth and all other institutions involved not only here but also in the region in order to give life to this space where various initiatives will be shaped, and where young people from different countries will play their role to promote cooperation models and implement shared ideas, projects and initiatives.
I want to express my gratitude to the Secretary of State for European Affairs of France, a very good friend of Albania and Albanians, but also – I think I can say this – a dear friend of mine, Harlem Desir, who today travelled to be here, which in my view shows not only the respect but also the interest of France for this initiative so important.
I thank also others who are here, representatives of both countries supporting this initiative, Germany and France. As it usually happens in all European bodies, Germany is not represented just by itself, but also through other institutions. We have also the Head of the OSCE Mission here, representing the OSCE, but who is German. It’s a known experience in Europe today, that the Germans are always in a higher number than others also because they come to the decision-making tables from other paths of life.
I want to thank all those who have come from the region, the Serbian colleague here by my side, and all the others who are here present.
I strongly believe that we can do together what the French and Germans did for Europe. Of course, we can do this on the regional scale, and this is no small thing. For let’s not forget that this is the region that used to be called and remained for a long time the “powder keg” of Europe, this is the region where World War I started, and where the rivers of blood and the gaps of major divisiveness due to 1001 reasons defined our neighbourly relations for many years.
Today we are in a different context. We have an atmosphere of peace and interaction, although we do not agree on everything among each other. That’s why such initiatives are so valuable because they are the right efforts in the right way, to give this peace the quality of a sustainable cooperation, of a harmonized interaction in view of a path which is clearly defined for us, and that is the path of the European Union. And we hope that when we get there, we will find all of you, starting from France where elections will take place next year.
Many thanks!
