Prime Minister Edi Rama speaking to students at Pristina University’s Department of International Relations:
Hello everyone! Prior to our visit to Pristina, I received an email sent by your organization. I forwarded it to my cabinet and I asked them to explore opportunities to hold this meeting. To tell you the truth, there was much scepticism around this meeting and the advice I was given was “why to attend such a meeting? Why to take such a risk?” But I like taking risks and here I am.
Thank you for the invitation and for your presence. It is a pleasure for me, because I believe these are important communication spaces outside the clichés we are used to and which are imposed on us also due to a kind of indifference – so to say – young people are showing when it comes to involvement in debates concerning politics. Many commit an elementary mistake when saying: “I do not care about politics; I am not interested in politics.” No matter whether you wish to deal or not with the politics, it is the latter that deals with you and the more people get involved in politics, the higher are the opportunities for the politics to be more acceptable and valuable to the people. If politics becomes a monopoly in few hands, the higher is the danger for the politics to become less willing to understand people.
I respect young people who do not refuse the challenge of dealing with politics, not necessarily become politicians, but as citizens. The politics was born to bring people together and deliver on things they can’t accomplish on their own. Nobody can change things that go beyond their power and capacities alone. Everything we encounter as soon as we walk out of our homes goes beyond our individual capacities and that’s why politics is needed and the more voices come together to accomplish on a shared goal, the more possible its accomplishment becomes possible. This is what politics does and this is why it was born and, although the politics has sometimes caused a lot of woes and troubles throughout history of mankind, one shouldn’t forget that mankind would be lacking a lot of the things people enjoy today if politics was not to exist. Without politics, the United States and the European Union themselves wouldn’t have come to existence. Without politics there would have been no rights, from freedom to the right to vote. No progress would have been made on the gender equality without politics. No systems supporting the most vulnerable ones would have ever come to existence without politics. No sovereign Kosovo would have become a reality without politics.
–Have the government of Albania and the government of Kosovo a long-term plan to improve economic, political, social position of the population in the Presevo Valley and what do you plan to do about this issue in a short-term?
PM Edi Rama: Thank you for the question as it helps us to frame and focus the debate, not only on the Presevo Valley issue, but in a wider region. Very often or always, except those living in the Valley or those who for a reason or another are connected to the Valley, when it comes to the ties between Albania and Serbia and the effort to develop a constructive relationship with Serbia, one forgets that an Albanian community, an important national minority lives in Serbia and that they need a double support from both the government of Albania and the government of the state of Kosovo, as well as a support internally in terms of taking forward various issues in their best interest by establishing a favourable relation with the government of the state where they reside.
Of course it is easier said than done, and I have any illusions about it, but ignoring this fact does not help us figure out how to advance the freedoms and rights of Albanians in the Presevo valley by mobilizing all mechanisms.
Of course, the diplomatic mechanism dealing with the relations between us and Serbia is inalienable. We may chose to consider it or not, we decide to use it or not, but failure or refusal to make use of it leads to the loss of one of the elements with which we can operate in interest of the Presevo Valley residents.
The truth is that several steps towards interaction with them have been made. The truth is that our government has been trying to assist them in a direct way. The truth is that we are in contact and we have made frequent efforts to facilitate communication between them and the truth is that a non-poor political life goes on in the Valley and there are people willing and ambitious to make use of politics to improve living conditions of the population there.
Of course a lot remain to be done, but I am confident that no matter how much we assist, also because of the limited financial means of Albania and Kosovo, it is important that we try to help them internally, raising our voice and constantly reminding Serbian authorities how Serbia’s citizens are treated, the freedom and the rights they enjoy and are granted in Kosovo in particular, and how Serbian citizens of Albanian ethnicity, i.e. the Albanian national minorities, are being treated in the Presevo Valley. The contrast is huge, tremendously huge.
The truth is that Kosovo Serbs enjoy the freedoms and rights that every national minority and every country would dream about. I don’t mean the Greek national minority in Albania, because it is a completely different story and the situation is completely different, but I am talking about areas, territories emerging from very fresh conflicts. So, I would say we will work on all of these areas. None of these plans is sufficient on its own. We must know how to harmonize it all together and we must use the power of diplomacy as much as possible and with as much skill as possible.
-Have you agreed in advance with the Kosovo Prime Minister, Mr. Kurti, on a potential agreement you would sign in November? How the blockade in northern Kosovo will be resolved?
PM Edi Rama: You know that for several years now, we have taken the relationship between the government of Albania and Kosovo to a whole new level by introducing the mechanism of joint sessions of the two governments and through this instrument the two governments have the opportunity to discuss differently from what happens in routine bilateral meetings, to make decisions and to give themselves the opportunity to oversee their implementation in the process, as another joint meeting follows and it takes stock of the implementation of the previous agreements.
In this respect, I think we have produced more deals and accords than ever before. But, on the other hand, the truth is that a significant part of these agreements have yet to be fully implemented or they have been implemented partially or not at all because of a work system that needs to be changed and this is what I discussed with your Prime Minister today. We discussed ways to change this work system and how both administrations in Kosovo and Albania apply this system with equal readiness and capacity to realize how important the steps towards the future are, just like it is the case with us who make the decisions on any agreement and there are a lot of seemingly minor issues, but which all together form a very important mosaic aimed at facilitating and improving the quality of the lives of our citizens on both sides of the border, which unfortunately still keeps apart. The first issue is definitely the border still dividing us and which can become less invisible through daily commitment and readiness. We can reduce the long queues, eliminate double checks on all trucks transporting goods on both sides of the border. We can put an end to the dramatic situation of km-long queues of cars and vehicles at the peak of the tourism season, and as such it would become a normal border without influencing the citizens’ lives, just like it happens on the borders among the EU member states, by becoming part of a new system of the freedoms of movement, which are indeed the same freedoms in the European Union. The EU works on the basis of four freedoms that are applied and enforced by every member state, namely the freedom of people, goods, capital and services. This means that no borders work among the EU member states when it comes to these four freedoms and I can’t grasp why something like that doesn’t work between Albania and Kosovo. We can implement it without having to reach same agreement with other countries.
Over all these years, leaders, political and government authorities both in Albania and here in Kosovo, have frequently issued statements, pledging to remove the border between the two countries. One said we would remove it ahead of the New Year’s Eve, someone else pledged to pull out the border on the Christmas Eve, while some others have pledged to take it away on the Independence Day, but the border was never removed. Was it because all those issuing such statements didn’t want the border being removed? Not at all! They really wished to remove the border, but once you state in Albanian that you will be removing the border, such a statement alarms whole world and not Belgrade only. Such a statement alarms also Brussels and Washington. This is one of the reasons why I have so much insisted on what it was originally called – for you to know I would like to say I am neither the one to name it, nor have I ever liked that mini-Schengen name. Given that I am 198 cm tall, the word doesn’t fit me. The Mini-Schengen actually is the same initiative like the Open Balkans, about which the word Schengen was used to clearly convey the idea what it was about and I persisted particularly on the free movement of people. Serbia was ready to join the process, but wanted the free movement of people be excluded for reasons everybody knows. This is because for Serbia and the Serbian President, if they were to accept the free movement of people, they would automatically accept the border removal between Albania and Kosovo, although this wouldn’t be the case with Serbia’s borders with other countries. In the meantime, we couldn’t accept an incomplete project and we insisted, we either grant free movement of people for the four countries, or for none of them. Therefore, the project was delayed for several years until they agreed on this issue. So, it was about two parallel rails we had to walk on.
As far as the current situation in the North of Kosovo is concerned, in my view this is very clear to everyone. I think Kosovo is right. The issue of vehicle circulation, the issue of license plates is a matter of legitimacy, of the sovereignty of each country and is an issue that has been addressed in previous agreements.
Serbia claims that Kosovo’s Serb citizens are being threatened, but it is already pretty clear that Kosovo’s Serbs are not threatened by anyone or anything, but they represent the national minority most favoured in Kosovo and rightly so, in my view. This makes Kosovo one of the brightest examples of how ethnic minorities should be treated, although I still find hard to figure out how one can benefit that way to have the electricity bills paid by the government. However, the fact is that Serbs are not threatened by the state of Kosovo, by the government of Kosovo, by the Kosovo police, but they are all hostages to the dialogue that has run into sand and the failure to ultimately resolve the issue. The theatrical manoeuvres with helicopters and military planes may mesmerize the Serbian public opinion that probably needs to be fed with the idea that Serbia possesses military means to defend the brothers, who are actually not threatened by anything, or they can mesmerize certain people here and elsewhere in Albanian territories that see only war on Facebook. It is an easy fought war on Facebook, but Kosovo has won the war since many of you here were just born or were to be born yet. You are now 20 to 23 years old.
How can this story go on in the same way now?
How one can go on living with war in their mind, while it is now all about building sustainable and lasting peace, part of which would certainly be Kosovo’s final recognition that would mark the formal conclusion of the chapter of the former Yugoslavia.
I think the situation is clear, but what worries me most is that the situation should not repeat itself, just like it happened with the border tariffs, because deploying special police forces immediately to make sure that something unpleasant, something that would hurt people, including those who serve, doesn’t happen and it doesn’t seem to me that it is a declaration of war or that it is a provocation for anyone, but stationing the special forces there for a long time could become a boomerang, as happened with the tariff. When the border tariff was set, I strongly agreed and publicly supported it. For me it was an outcry someone had to listen to, because countless letters were sent to Brussels, suggesting that deals between two countries were not respected and it took the tariff to raise awareness of whole international opinion that doesn’t live with us every day and it is not there to deal with our problems every day and that’s why we should take our fate in our hands courageously, not by imagining to resolve the problems emerging during the peace process through the means of war, because they can’t be solved that way, but they just create illusions and delay us, but by showing courage, capacities and diplomatic skills.
What happened with the border tariff? The imposed tariff was an outcry that raised awareness of everyone, for the sake of truth, but it turned into a rope strangling Kosovo’s feet and made Kosovo look like the black ship, exactly because the tariff was imposed for a long time. It became an instrument to play politics internally in Kosovo.
The same would happen with the police Special Forces, if they are not replaced with forces in the table of talks. What we should never forget is that Kosovo is a brainchild of international community. Kosovo was born from an ideal relationship at a certain moment between the extreme desire for freedom, which was translated into the foundation of a liberation army, and the immense support by the international community, without which Kosovo would have never become independent. This international community, which we know very well who it is and these friends and these great allies, we must keep very close and we must not give them cause to become alienated, be disappointed and tired, as happened, unfortunately, in the case of tariffs, where Kosovo lost a lot of international reputation, where foreign policy cannot become domestic policy. Of course you can take advantage of it to gain more votes, but it hurts the country, it hurts the perspective, it hurts the relationship with others. Just like domestic politics cannot become foreign policy and the confusion of these two things has been a problem that I hope Kosovo has overcome.
–Kosovo students who wish to attend university in Albania are granted free admission quotas. The same happens with students from Albania wishing to attend Kosovo universities. I would like to know whether the intergovernmental cooperation and some education reforms would allow students from both countries to attend universities as regular students.
PM Edi Rama: That’s a very good question in the sense that it allows me to go back to the question made by the girl there regarding the today’s talks and one of the issues we discussed was finding ways to better structure cooperation in the area of education, where we face problems in recognition of university diplomas. I believe you know quite well that there are contradictions between Albania’s and Kosovo’s legislation on university students, including the permission for stay. Albania has removed the requirement for any Kosovo citizen to obtain permission to stay and nobody now needs to obtain documents or temporary permission, while a permanent permission to stay is obtained through a very brief procedures. The same goes for the work permits, because our legislation contained an absurd clause, stipulating that any EU citizen is granted permit to stay upon arrival and they could stay and work in the country as long as they wished to do so, while citizens from other countries, including Kosovo citizens were treated like any other foreigner, as if they were Arabs or Chinese. We granted Kosovo citizens the same right like any other EU citizen, by applying same freedom of movement rules currently applied in the EU member states. Just imagine countless rules and procedures were applied among Albanians with citizens having to obtain all sorts of documents, permits, authorizations, certificates. So, we have liberated the process in this respect.
The other aspect has to do with what we can do to further liberalize the process to allow for a freer influx of the students. We are exploring these opportunities. We want to provide Kosovo students more space in Albania’s universities. I don’t have a final answer to this issue for the time being, because we are exploring these opportunities, but what I would like to say is that in the meantime we are engaged in an intensive work to take the diversity Albanian universities offer to a whole new level, by establishing partnership agreements between our universities and international universities, which will offer same degree programs and equal university diplomas. For example, if you wish to study agronomy in Vienna in one of the world’s most famous universities on issues of rural development, they will be able to attend such a degree program in Tirana. It has yet to be done, but this is an ongoing process on which we are making progress and we will make sure that students earn a diploma equal to one issued by Vienna university, because of common degree programs. There is a number of Albanian universities joining these common programs.
On the other hand, we are also seeking to bring international universities in Albania. For example, the first foreign university we will bring into Albania, which will operate independently and which will not set limited admission quotas for Kosovo students, but it will be open to everyone, and that is the Istanbul Technical University. We are preparing entire required documentation. It has been agreed and work is underway and opening the Istanbul Technical University in Albania will allow every student, without having to leave their country, to attend and be graduated from top universities and your diploma be valid throughout the world, while costs will significantly reduced for you. The opportunities will be higher, because more admission quotas will be offered, while fewer quotas are offered in universities abroad. This is more or less my answer.
–I would like to ask a question you actually indirectly already answered. My question is mostly about the Open Balkans initiative, with you being one of the masterminds behind this initiative. I would like to ask you whether you really believe this initiative would establish better economic cooperation and fresh economic opportunities for the Balkans and Albanian territories in particular, or is it merely a political move to pressure European Union regarding integration of the Western Balkan countries?
The second part of my question is about you as leader of all Albanians outside Albania’s borders. What should Albanians remember you during your political career?
PM Edi Rama: You and people generally speaking think that politicians don’t say what they really think, think what they actually don’t say and do what they don’t actually believe and don’t believe in what they do. But I would like to openly and sincerely telly that I would never involve in politics if I were born in France, Germany, England or the United States. Nor would I ever involve in politics in Albania if it was not for my personal story interlaced with the course of my life, which in one way or another involved me without ever thinking that one day I would wear a suit, so to say.
When I involved in politics I used to have earrings, I had my original teeth. I was hairy, somehow more hairy than any of you here, though you have long hair, but you have them cut. If I want to extend them, this would be impossible for me. So many years ago and without thinking I would ever be doing this job, things flowed in a certain way. I do not know whether you have ever heard the saying that “life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
I am doing nothing I don’t believe in and if I don’t really believe in something, I simply quit and I don’t pursue it. I am 100%, not 99%, that Open Balkans initiative is for us the only way to put an end to the infinite inertia of history repetition and instead deliver welfare for the citizens. The initiative is today the complementary part of the path towards full-fledged integration into the EU, which doesn’t depend on us. Kosovo citizens should have been travelling freely without visas for years now. You are the Europe’s only community that should obtain visa to travel and you are the only community that has been liberated by the Euro-Atlantic alliance from an ethnic dictatorship. It is absurd, because your parents and grandparents, although living under Slobodan Milosevic’s regime at certain moments, could travel freely to Europe with the former Yugoslavia’s passport. You now live in a sovereign state, yet you can’t travel. This is because the European Union fails to keep its word and deliver. It is not at all about what they claim today regarding your right to travel freely. Kosovo was asked – just like everyone of us was asked, just like Albania was asked – to deliver on a set of technical benchmarks to secure borders, secure biometric passports and other requirements and only then the visas would be liberalized. It is not me saying this, no politician in Kosovo is saying this, but it is the EU report itself. I don’t know whether you still remember, since several years have already passed, but all of a sudden the EU asked Kosovo also to set the demarcation line with Montenegro for the visas to be liberalized. One can’t grasp what the demarcation line with Montenegro had to do with the technical process, equal to everyone else. The issue of demarcation line with Montenegro was resolved, but the visas have yet to be liberalized. Why don’t they decide to remove visa regime now?
In the meantime, the EU has liberalized the visa regime for 100 million people between Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, whilst 2 million people here cannot travel, as if the borders were to open an invasion would take place and Paris, together with Berlin, would be flooded. It is a shame and I have stated this publicly and I reiterate it in every meeting. It is a shame.
Albania should have started the EU accession talks by now, as the decision has been already made, but the negotiations have been blocked. Now it is this story featuring Bulgaria asking North Macedonia that they have once been Bulgarians in the ancient past, and only then Albania can start the negotiations on its EU accession. These are all things not depending on us and they are holding neither Kosovo, nor Albania hostage, because they hate Albanians, or have something against us. They are doing so for domestic political reasons. The European Union was founded by men of big ideals and goals, whereas today the European Union is governed by local interests and polls. They act based on the poll’s findings and results. They think that if they are to liberalize the visa regime for Kosovo, it could happen that their voters would be outraged and therefore they could lose elections and there are 27 local and general elections held in 27 EU member states in four years.
There is no other way for us, but both Albania and Kosovo should work do build functioning states in accordance with the EU standards and based on the values, aspirations and principles that the EU aspires to embody. We should do this not because the EU asks us to do so, but this is what we should pass on to the future generations. It is such states where the children of Kosovo and Albania should live in. That’s why we should do that. It doesn’t depend on us when we are asked to start this and that process. What depends on us is to do everything that we enlarge here, because it is not the European Union the one to come and ask us to remove borders in the region. The European Union cannot ask us not to apply the free movement of people, goods, capital and services. Not only that, but the EU, under Germany’s auspices and initiative, has launched a process that has been called the Berlin Process. However, what’s the problem with the Berlin Process?
The Berlin Process is an initiative on the basis of which stand implementation of all these four freedoms and the process should be funded to support infrastructure projects. Seven or eight years have already passed since the Process was launched and, in the political aspect, the Berlin Process has done best possible thing, because it is now a common thing for the heads of state and governments of the six Western Balkan countries to sit together and talk. We haven’t seen much happening except this. I don’t think you have seen any railway and other infrastructure built, and this is all because the process was extremely slow. Another aspect is that the Berlin Process depends on the meetings they host. Why should we wait for them to hold meetings once a year and discuss about issues concerning farmers? So that farmers, agricultural crop traders and exporters from Kosovo can export potatoes to Albania or North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia or wherever else and vice-versa. Should we wait for them to do that?
We will do something very simple. We will reduce paperwork so that the export documents are not multiple ones. This is so that agricultural products from Konispol, watermelons let’s say, do not rot before the load reaches its destination in Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia or in any other country just because of the long wait times at border, but instead just a file of documents issued in Albania would be sufficient to allow for quicker transport of the goods, just like it happens in the entire EU space. When someone embarks on exporting a product from Italy to Sweden he is not subject to seven different border checks, he is not asked for his product to undergo tests at seven border crossings and the product’s origin is sufficient instead. This would be translated into growth of movement, exports, revenue, income and employment. There is a catastrophic data provided by the World Bank as commissioned under the Berlin Process, and the World Bank has found that the wait times at the Western Balkan borders in a single year is equal to 110 years. So, if you sum up wait time at the all borders of the Western Balkan countries it is equal to 110 years. This is a wasted time.
The World Bank report also notes that all countries in the region – since there are some people claiming that Serbia is to benefit most and other countries to lose most. Why would be losing from this? Of course Serbia would win, but we would win too. Albania will win, Kosovo will win, all other countries in the region will win and we should give up thinking “I don’t want anything, just everyone else to lose.” Instead we should think how our country can make the best of it and I don’t care what the others earn. The document also notes that the gross domestic production of all these countries would increase by several percentage points. Why should we deny and deprive ourselves from this?
Some say that this undervalues or overshadows the strategic issue of Kosovo’s recognition. No, I think quite the opposite would happen. I think that it is much more difficult to dialogue and find a way to secure recognition amid an atmosphere of aerial manoeuvres that remind us of the war rather than in an atmosphere with you being part of a society that does business, a society that develops tourism, part of a society that progresses and societies move to whole new level with tension among members being very low. The cause of Kosovo’s recognition should go through a diplomatic strategy and the capability to bring all these countries together. It is something else to agree with an enemy, but it is essential to sit and start communicating. We can’t pick our neighbours. We can’t choose our brother and neighbour. They just happen to be there; one thanks to the parents love and the other just happens to be there. This is what we have here. What are we supposed to do now? Should we declare war via Facebook? Shall we isolate ourselves? There are some others who appear to issue statements on the market, when it is true that Serbia, in terms of its impact on consume, is omnipresent in Kosovo’s market. It is not Albania, and nobody else, but Kosovo. Should people give up eating since food comes mainly from Serbia?
The opposite leads us nowhere. So many years have passed. You were born either during the war or when Kosovo declared its independence. How long will you live? As long as an eagle lives, 350 years? How long will we wait?
Of course what I’m saying won’t yield results overnight, but it is certain that brick by brick, wall by wall we would build another path to the future. If you are to look at the history of the world, it is full of these, that after all, with whom will you make peace?
You would certainly reach peace with your former enemy or with the most recent enemy. You have defeated this enemy during war; you have won the war and not the enemy. Let them wander in vain with helicopters and airplanes. And I don’t know why they are doing so. Kosovo has won the war. Could you afford yourself to act like a defeated, when you are actually the winner? Would you isolate yourself? Would you push yourself into thinking that you are at war? With whom? With the windmills? The war now takes place at the table of talks. Who would best perform at talks, who would best play in politics, not through violence. One can’t win by resorting to tanks and helicopters. This is my modest opinion.
–As everyone knows, Rama 2 cabinet included two members from Kosovo, while no member from Kosovo is now part of your new cabinet. What happened?
PM Edi Rama: I will become a Kosovo citizen myself during my third term in office. Don’t laugh at this, because I go to the bottom of it when I decide to do something. Thank you very much, but I won’t come to Kosovo to take part in electoral campaigns and gain votes. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t even come to vote here.
