The International Conference on Governance was held today in Tirana, featuring a panel discussion on Albania’s perspective in the European integration process, with Prime Minister Edi Rama among the participants.
This event turned Tirana into an international hub for governance dialogue, bringing together political leaders, ambassadors, ministers, experts, and representatives of international institutions.
The forum’s program was built around four key themes: The challenges and opportunities of governance in a rapidly changing world; The European integration agenda for the Western Balkans; Public sector reforms in Albania for the next four years; Local governance and decentralization reforms.
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Prime Minister Rama: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with Besnik and his friends and to have the opportunity to share a few thoughts, rather than a speech, about this. On one hand, the European integration process is beyond the political part of it, but technically it is a blessing because it’s the only know-how transfer channel you can find in the world about how to build institutions. When you have institutions, like Britain again, it looks less appealing. But when you don’t, it’s a blessing.
So how Albania could build institutions if not through this channel and through all this neurotic process of benchmarks and criteria and standards and all things that look like crazy, and they are crazy, but at the end, it’s a learning curve that otherwise you can’t. You just can’t.
New technology can give us, in countries like ours, the possibility to make jumps that otherwise would have been impossible. So, imagine, if digital technology would not be available, how could we be able to offer millions of services online, which until then were millions of people staying in line to get a birth certificate. Just to get the paper that you exist, you must stay in line, to stay in line physically. It’s only because of technology that we can do this, or in many other areas. We created a model that works for us through artificial intelligence, and what the others did in seven years. Croatia, seven years, we can do in less than two years. And we are doing it very fast. So, it would have been impossible without technology. Or public procurement, we have made a lot of progress.
Now we are aiming to have the first model in Europe of AI public procurement, full form from A to Z, which will practically make public procurement transparent and not at all contestable. Maybe one of the side effects will be that many people will not want any more to do politics. But it’s fine, it might be a side effect. Public procurements are a good reason for many people to enter politics. So, these are the two very, very strong lies time has given us, the know-how transfer of EU integration and technology. I always, I have said in non-suspected times that for us, the process is as important, if not more important than the result, than the result to be members.
So, the journey in this case is what we need. Because if we become a country that acts institutionally like a member state, this is the best heritage we can give to our kids, to grow up and to live in a country where institutions work like, not like in Germany, God forbid, but let’s say like in Italy or in some Mediterranean, because we’ll never become Germans, it’s not possible, even with the help of the EU, and we are good like that.
So, we need to not lose completely the chance to have some little chaos in our life, which is the joyful part of life, and which is the reason why all the ambassadors love to be in Albania longer than their mission, and when they leave Albania, they are all sad. Exporting democracy is not a good idea. This is what I can say from my perspective, because I have nothing to lose anymore. So, whoever thinks that this is going too far, I’m sorry, but this is what it is. So, because from the idea of exporting democracy, there have been done some crazy mistakes. For example, from the idea of exporting your model, a lot of harm can be done to yourself. And in our case, we cannot export a model and harm others, like big countries have done so far. But if we even think about exporting our model, we can harm ourselves big time, because we can become so delusional, like we were.
So, what we should do is just to create a good model for our society based on what we have chosen freely to be part of this, let’s say, community of countries that believe in. Certain things, but these certain things cannot make us judgmental about other countries. You know, look at the countries of the Middle East, the Gulf countries. How can we be judgmental towards them because they don’t have the same system? We cannot. We should not. On the contrary, we should be very respectful, and we should learn from them. And they can learn from us but not base our relationship with others on how much others want to be like us. This has made, in my belief, the West become kind of annoying thing when the others are lectured, you know, democracies versus autocracies, you know, what is this? Were we to decide how the world should work? We must work together and build what we like to do.
So, Albanians have never had the possibility to choose freely with whom to live. And we have been victims of the choices of others. For the first time in history, we have chosen, as a nation, that we want to be part of European Union. It’s a national choice. It’s fantastic. So, it’s enough. We cannot go and lecture our Saudi friends, why you don’t want to be like us. They would laugh, you know, as they really laugh, but just being kind to us. So, this is my take.
Now there is one thing that I think we can export anyhow, which is not our model, it’s a product, which is this AI procurement. If it will work like we think, if it will come out as fast as we think, and if others are not going to surprise us by bringing it out before, but I don’t think so because they don’t have in general the same problem we have. So maybe public procurement in Britain can be long, I don’t know, but it’s not a problem in terms of the integrity as it is here. So, it’s from the problem. But if we succeed, I’m sure that a lot of countries will love it. And that’s why when we started the cooperation with Microsoft, we made sure that they acknowledged us the right on the model so we can sell it. And it will be really a great thing, you know, to say you want to fight corruption, buy this model from us. It would be fantastic.
I’m not going to allow the government to give it for free to the Americans and to the Brits, because they take everything for free. They are used like that.
All right, well, thank you, Prime Minister, for your insights. I think we can all agree that we’re inspired by what you’re doing in terms of AI and digital transformation, and hopefully other countries will soon have something good to borrow from Albania as they have been during the past couple of decades.
