Address of Prime Minister Edi Rama in the joint meeting of the governments of Albania and Kosovo:

Mr. Prime Minister of Kosovo and co-chair of this meeting,

Ministers,

Dear fellow citizens on both sides of the mountains,

Our coming back to this joint round table of the two governments, which had its commencement in Prizren, a city marked as the place of all beginnings throughout the Albanian state-building history, is something happening at the right time.

All those acquainted with the goals and technical rounds preceding the agreements we are about to sign today that cover an array of matters ranging from a common trade area to border control and the joint pursuit against organized crime are able to testify to the significant extent of convergence our joint agenda have reached in one year time.

The truth actually is that what happened in Prizren the other day and is following in Tirana today comes as the fulfilment of a major time-imposed demand: the reality-based policymaking.

It is since time now that Albanians are incessantly proposing and building connecting bridges to the centuries-long dream of returning to our common European home. Weary in the past of the segregation in neighbouring territories and presently aware of their key role in the region, Albanians have extended the hand of cooperation and understanding with courage and generosity.

Dialogue and convergence are what Albanians seek to attain through understanding and cooperation. The union amongst us in the region and, eventually, of the region with the United Europe is what Albanians aspire to, being fully cognizant of the fact that it is the bridges of tomorrow, rather than yesterday’s pitfalls, which will lead us through towards our major strategic goal. Notably, for instance, although Albanians in Macedonia face obstruction in their quest to fully implement the Ohrid Agreement, they keep sticking to it loyally, in both in letter and spirit, with their commendable self-restraint, thus assuring sustainability and encouraging collaboration in a region where little would it take to reignite the embers of division, confrontation and peace spoiling.

The truth is that in their course to fully acquire the rights they are entitled to, Albanians want to preserve rather than impair balances. What they are doing is to simply ask for what is rightfully theirs as human community in the states they are living or, equally so, what they have acknowledged as rights to the others in both their states, Albania and Kosovo.

Going through decades of a bitter reality of downtrodden and violated ethnicity, Albanians today constitute a noble example for their co-existence with other ethnicities who are a minority in both of our states. In this respect, the Republic of Kosovo is an exemplary case not only for the Balkans, but Europe at large. Such inspiration drawn from this side-by-side living in Albania and Kosovo is, further, what drives Presevo Valley Albanians to persevere in their repeated principled requests to ensure in Serbia as well that same embodiment of understanding and cooperation between them and the Serbian people.

In return, our exemplary attitude towards minorities allows us to call on Serbia unanimously to guarantee to the Albanians of Presevo Valley what Serbians in the north of Kosovo have been guaranteed; no more, no less.

Far from the official apology and forgiveness, it took years for France and Germany in the aftermath of World War II to get over the mindsets that had been rooted for centuries and shape a peace worth living for. When General De Gaulle and Chancellor Adenauer appeared together in the grand mass of reconciliation held at Reims Cathedral in 1963, all the fratricidal conflict had been left behind to pave the way to youth and university cooperation offices, projects for navigation on the Rhine or for the Aerospatiale.

With inside clarity gained on the past and an inevitable compliance with the Franco-German model that looks to the future both Albanians and Serbians can be instilled with immense impetus to turn the page of our region’s history once and for all, and transform it into the page of one uniting success story.

A journey of this kind, complex-free and authentically engaging, is what Albania and Kosovo have constantly proposed to Serbia, as the unavoidable European path. We are ready to play our role to the end to make sure that promises are transformed into commitment and tangible cooperation projects with Serbia.

Joining forces to strengthen future’s role in the current policies pursued by the countries of the region is a must, in order for us to succeed in encouraging our European partners as well to accept the need there is for an integration of the Balkans as sooner as possible, under a strategic European project, not as the ongoing routine of a bureaucratic process.

Pressed between the manifestation of terrorism across the continent, an internal disappointment of different groups of opinion at the European dream, and the hordes of bigots bred in packs by an East that is both far and near, torn by poverty and perplexed, it is now more than ever that the Union should promote the European ideals now, without regarding our region as just another trouble adding to the ones they have to face already.

We are convinced that the mentioned challenges that are not an exclusive burden of the European Union Member States, but also of countries like ours do deal with, shall only be addressed by veering away from the habitual course and a normative frame that is self-feeding and strips Europe off new energies and potentials.

The Albanian co-existence model is a shield as much as it is a roadmap for all Europe, with the latter being home to and composed of a significant religious and ethnic diversity. This is why we have a conviction persistently conveyed to our European partners that our region and, specifically, Albania and Kosovo, deserve attention and a strategic approach in place. It has never occurred to us either with NATO membership in the past or full European Union integration in the future to think they are for-profit projects. On the other hand, Albania, Kosovo and the Balkans cannot become European Union’s “business as usual”.

Within this context, the process started in Berlin and the tools it offers outside usual obsolete boxes unfolds itself as a pragmatic and hope-inspiring process that we are striving to intensify along the lines of the aforementioned roadmaps. An inherent part of the vision of European Union founding fathers, the Balkans is actually a key to security and harmony within the old continent.

Albania and Kosovo have opted to pursue a policymaking process that is based on reality: the reality of one land, one people, one dream.

One land that provides limitless grounds to the real policymaking, a space that is offered to everyone in a journey that becomes more of a common route day by day.

One people who is to the reality-based decision making a community of civility and citizens free to move, interact and to engage in undertakings, prosper in full peace and mutual dependence.

As far as our dream is concerned, the national unification under the European Union, that is the constant wisdom and inspiration that underpins the reality-based policymaking.

This is reminding me of the note a young high school student, member of French resistance, left behind only a few moments before being executed by the Nazis. “The dream of people – he wrote, – is the occurrence itself.” This is the only authentic reality worth living.

Albania and Kosovo shall jointly engage in making a reality-based politics, because as Charles de Gaulle, the shunner of ideologies and great master of clarity, would say, this is the only politics worth making.

In the span of year, we proved that the undertaken policies have been a match to our common and great ambition, in particular when it comes to the actions taken in relation to the harmonization of main developmental policies. Work has been done to create a common energy market and complete our 400 kV interconnection power line. Efforts have intensified in terms of agricultural cooperation, in a bid to unify standards and adjust legal methods in food control. Further, we have laid the foundations for the pre-university system unification. Designation of joint development policies, mainly in the areas along the border, was held as a priority of our agricultural policies. Additionally, cooperation has become concrete in the areas of culture, tourism and environmental protection.

Realities are in the eyes of everyone and, as such, they keep manifesting themselves in a constantly exigent and unrelenting manner. Kosovo is a human dream that makes of each daily occurrence an event; an independent State walks along its path of consolidation accompanied by major strategic allies, starting with small Albania to continue with the United States of America, the European Union, Germany and France individually, who, by acknowledging its right to self-determination, prevented the worst from happening and put flesh on the bones of a citizenship denied.

Realities more than passions are what turn Albania’s eyes to Kosovo with the uniting venture of a people who is no longer divided, but also the project of a Balkans region that is fragmented no more, but unified by common synergies, all-inclusive strategies that grow in a field planted with the seeds of co-existence.

What Albania and Kosovo are trying to demonstrate is that they are two interaction poles and a driving engine for the regional processes, open for common reflection to the neighbouring countries, like Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia.

The Berlin process proves that this one is a true effort and the challenge Kosovo, in particular, has the vocation to faced, as a reality where it stands with full citizenship right in the international community, will not be Kosovo’s exclusive success story; it will be the success of the region as a whole and, with no doubt, of Europe itself.

Albania keeps giving a strong support to Kosovo in its quality of main strategic partner, sticking to our two countries’ agenda with the establishment of joint consular offices, such as that in Munich expected to open this year, following Milan’s successful experience in 2014, and trying to speed up the process of recognition from as many states as possible that must, in turn, be followed by the integration stage in international organizations thanks also to the unremitted efforts of the diplomacy on both sides of the border throughout all this time.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations on Kosovo’s membership in the International Organization of the Francophonie, the regional bodies of the Joint Southeast Europe Cooperation Initiative for arms’ control verification and implementation, for migration, asylum and refugees and its concrete commitment with the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe Development Bank, International Olympic Committee and last, but, not least in my view, the International Basketball Federation.

By bringing its policies to a standard that is in line with the EU’s and NATO’s, the Government of Kosovo is working hard towards its integration in these structures and to continuing the cooperation established so far in the area of diplomacy, defence, fight against terrorism and fundamentalism, organized crime and corruption, as well as illicit trafficking. Consequently, in light of the new realities Kosovo is embodying in the region and in Europe, Albania will never cease to strongly and proudly support everything Kosovo has done and is actually doing to successfully finalize the Stabilization and Association Process and to achieve disenclavement of the country and its citizens through visa liberalization and the right to free movement.

Failure to lift visa requirements for Kosovo’s citizens is a great paradox when compared to the dark past of the country, where, regardless of everything, people of the country were able to move freely to Europe. Today, instead, application of such regime has turned Kosovo into a desperate enclave of European bureaucracy.

We have been vocal about this and will make the case wherever and whenever the opportunity arises that the visa regime currently imposed on Kosovo is cynical injustice done to the country and it should end as soon as possible, since it does not only offend the dignity of Kosovo’s people, but the dignity of Europe itself. Keeping Kosovo restrained under a visa regime is a shame for the European Union.

Kosovo’s inclusion in all regional projects, with the most important among them considered the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), remains a priority, too.

On the other hand, realities are demanding for both Albania and Kosovo, who strongly believe in their dynamic. It is for that very reason that we must be frank and uncompromising when it comes to the truth. A total of Euro 160 million in trade exchange is already a reality, but it is far from making us satisfied and cannot be a reality which both our governments can easily come to terms with. Our ambition should be to achieve at least a twice as high figure.

While we keep promoting long-term economic strategies, we are yet to supply ourselves with engaging, conventional and legal tools that will enable us to deliver to the fullest. The solidity and self-confidence economic operators have in taking the steps needed to weave an economic region with the yarns and threads of infrastructure, energy, hydro resources and trade are still dependent on the enormous influence of the public actor. In this respect, we remain hopeful that the initiatives taken in line with the joint strategic partnership document signed in Prizren will be followed by tangible action.

By February this year we managed to finalize customs control coordination that, in addition to facilitating the movement of goods and people between Albania and Kosovo, constitutes an example for the entire region to ease customs and fiscal pressure and budge towards liberalizing free movement; which is one of the historic European project factors.

Strategic coordination in the governance of our common Albania-Kosovo space is a responsibility none of us convened in Tirana today would shy away from. The cooperation instruments about to be signed today are no ordinary tools that are solely in function of ensuring efficient inter-State cooperation. It is quite the opposite; these are tools intended to be at the service of defending all public liberties of our fellow nationals.

The cooperation agreements in the field of internal control, security, cross-border hot pursuit, common use of border control equipment will shrink the administrative border between the two countries transforming it into mere convention and building a true border belt against organized crime, trafficking and terrorist infiltration.

The cooperation agreement in higher education and scientific research, associated with the one on the organization of a common process to disseminate the Albanian language and culture in the Diaspora and emigration, will shorten geographic distances between Albanians wherever they are. This will be made possible by a streamlined process of teaching and propagation of the culture of our civilization and, above all, of our civic values as permanent education, thanks to our common language and heritage. Book distribution and consular assistance in providing the families, students and all fellow nationals in need with required documents are at the centre of this dispositive expected to become reality.

Education cannot stand alone without culture, however. Hence, a calendar of cultural exchanges – already developed between Albania and Kosovo – that grows beyond day-to-day relations into national events and manifestations will be at the heart of cementing our common belonging as Albanians and Europeans in this journey towards Europe.

The Archaeological Museum of Durres, which reopened yesterday in presence also of the ambassador of the Republic of Kosovo and the next nationwide Gjirokastra Festival set to take place in May are evident sparks that will continue to enlighten our mutual cooperation and cultural synchronization.

Coming to the end of my speech, I would like to reiterate again that the economic and financial cooperation agreements reached offer us a great premise to give a fresh qualitative boost to an open market that is free of bureaucratic barriers and whose development is encouraged by both public and private actors playing as equal partners in the free entrepreneurial initiative and a completion without restrictions and complexes.

Dear friends and fellow decision-makers coming from Kosovo today,

Before giving the floor to my friend, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, I would like to welcome you again and express my belief that the establishment we have given a life to and are consolidating along the way as a common strategic decision-making institution that covers the entire area governed by our two States will turn without doubt into a powerful drive charting new unifying paths forward for all our people.

I wish us the best of luck in our common work!