Statement by Prime Minister Edi Rama after meeting of the new European Political Community in Prague Castle:
The idea about a new European political community is indeed an idea perhaps as old as Europe itself. Its intellectual roots lie in the vision of a Frenchman – not Emmanuel Macron or, perhaps, Emmanuel as an earlier mystical incarnation – a Frenchman called the Abbot Charles de Saint-Pierre. In the 18th century, this Frenchman came up with the idea about creation of a European league of sovereign states, whose goal was to ensure eternal peace. It was the post-Utrecht Treaty era, a turning point in the history of Europe after years of bloody conflict, which had caused the loss of thousands of human lives and destruction, but, perhaps, just as significantly, had driven the appetite of their sovereigns for more wars. Apparently, it was a project for European integration that identified, precisely, the predominance of the individual egoism of the European states themselves as the greatest and most serious danger to unity and peace in Europe. The original idea actually remains one of the most visionary and ambitious institutional integration projects. It is a lesson, not only for the ambitious model it proposes, but also for the way it failed.”
This is how I started my keynote speech at the opening session of the Summit, adding that:
“However, leaders across Europe were enthusiastic about the idea. Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, was particularly optimistic. “All the project lacks to succeed,” – he wrote to Voltaire – “is the consensus of all Europe and some similar small details.”
I went on saying: “It is exactly these small details that have brought us together today, more than three centuries later.”
Over the centuries we have certainly learned to fail better and thanks to all the various attempts of all our European ancestors to overcome that mutual suspicion, which has often led to conflict and then to war, and in order to build mutual trust that would lead to peace and prosperity, the European Union definitely remains to this day the most successful, the most inspiring and the most concrete of the projects. The European Union is to be admired, not only because it brought the longest lasting-peace to this continent and created genuine forms of cooperation between countries, but also because, despite all its imperfections that cause divisions and ever more maelstrom to a territory that is nevertheless a spiritual territory that nurtures the feeling of belongingness especially to the younger generations, who feel being Europeans, before feeling Germans, French, Dutch or British and even Albanians, who, as it is universally known, the most Euro-optimistic, as the findings of the Brussels surveys suggest.
However, the Age of Tranquility is now over, and the Age of Danger has begun, which has become official, confronting us with another such dramatic common emergency; Russian aggression with its shocking political and economic effects. Especially the fear it has sown in the lives of our countries and citizens, it has led us to the absolute necessity to act as a single body, the European Union and Europe. Never before had the citizens of Europe faced so many common challenges, regardless of where they are, since the Second World War. And therefore, it is the hope that the new Political Community will become a common platform, where we will think about the challenges of the future in a way that brings us together, values the experiences and respects the internal dynamics of all the individual European states, but that at the same time changes the concept of what it means to be together in this territory regardless of who is EU and who is only E, a coexistence and a collective action.
I would like to hope that by reacting together in defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity, we have learned the lesson that it is precisely that this way we will also find the readiness to fight not only against the way some others do things, but also for the way we have to do things, as a whole European Political Community.
Being a long-time and fervent supporter of this new idea that I had the honor to co-write with Mark Rutte on an editorial, but also to draft a joint Albanian-Dutch proposal highly valued in this community, I shared today also my fear that how this, once again, could turn out to be something too good to be true. I fear that as we all face common problems, like skyrocketing energy prices, we, the Balkan’s Europeans, could again experience the terrifying loneliness of existence inside Europe’s internal border, yet excluded from common solutions, just as we were left out of the vaccine distribution plan during the first and most acute phase of the pandemic. I am also concerned that our best and brightest youngsters will continue to leave for the EU’s best universities because our universities will continue to be cut off from the EU common higher education system. I am also worried that in the face of the shared reality of scarce qualified workforce, in healthcare, for example, cruel market decisions will continue to rule. This means poor countries in this continent like ours and the countries in the region, like Albania will continue to finance the studies of doctors and nurses who are then swallowed away by rich countries in the EU, with nothing in return for us, but the bitter taste of the more of the same ongoing loss. Last, I am concerned that the idea of sharing and shifting the burden in a new space of cooperation could again turn out to be just the painful illusion that this too wasn’t the right thing for us.
But, having all this said, openly, bluntly, face to face, it must be underlined that, leaving the fear aside, I remain a supporter and we are supporters of this new European Political Community.
This is because Europe is on the brink of a possible World War III. Once again, Europe is there. Once again, Europe is at a stage where its future, which is unpredictable, can actually be predicted only if built by us.
The struggle for Europe cannot just be for some new policies to solve the problems that we have, but for a politics conducive to a new way of being together. This is why the promise of the new EPC is so seducing.
And that’s why today, very passionately but also extremely proudly, in the name of Albania I said all these and other things, while I am very confident that we are experiencing another new era for Europe, for another fresh development, without ever forgetting the individual path of our integration into the European Union.
