*Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy 100 Commissioners:

Thank you very much and as a host – and hospitality is exactly one of the values we praise most – I will try to wish you welcome in poor English, which I prefer instead of a poor translation of my perfect Albanian.

And before coming here, I followed a bit what my experts have prepared for me the address I am about to deliver here, and I found it horribly boring. But I have to cordially and wholeheartedly thank the chairwoman, because she opened the event, I think, by making right comments and indeed she inspired me to give up the written speech by starting with food and wine, she already mentioned.

I very much welcome you all in our Albania, in this country of ours, where, as I already said, is the most non-negotiable value we have. I would like to thank you for being here, although while hosting this conference was planned, you didn’t know that at a defining moment for our country, after seeing ourselves becoming a collateral damage, while our European friends were fighting against each other just few days ago in Brussels.

And going back to hospitality theme, I would like share an episode with you. Sometime ago, I received a text message from the person responsible for the VIP lounge at Tirana International Airport, saying: “Please, call me. It’s important, we need to talk.” I though a fire might had broken out. What might have happened? Why should a phone the director of this Rinas airport’s area? I picked the phone and I was told that a very important person from a EU member state was to arrive on a visit to Albania along with a bunch of journalists and policemen and this important person didn’t accept to get out of the airport’s VIP lounge to visit Tirana. I asked her, how comes? And the answer was: “This man wants to be escorted by guards armed with real guns and a whole convoy of armoured cars. I told her that as far as I know these cars are armoured. Yes – she said – but he doesn’t want to see guns, but Kalashnikov automatic rifles. I said: “OK, tell that guy we don’t offer such a special service so that he may go back home.” And after 45 minutes, the large convoy of policemen and journalists arrived and the stage was prepared for this man to issue a strong statement, saying Albania should work more to fight organized crime and trafficking. So this person came to meet me the next morning. I don’t know whether he knew what I already knew what had already happened, and what was his special request for. But the first sentence he uttered was: “Mr. Prime Minister, I owe you a very sincere apology.” I asked him, why? Because I have travelled to many countries, but I have never ever experienced such a gap between what I expected and what I saw. It is totally a different country from what I was prepared to see upon my arrival here. And he added: “Could you Mr. Prime Minister? Last evening, I walked in Tirana downtown and I haven’t seen yet a single woman wearing hijab.” I said: “It is hard for me to imagine this thing, because there are not so many women wearing hijab in Albania. There are few of them wearing a veil, but nothing more than that.

I am sure that many of you coming to Tirana have probably never thought you would be in a country like this and you probably had imagined a different Albania. You might have had many suspicions and I am sure many of you might have thought you could be kidnapped as soon as you were to arrive at Tirana airport, or you would be robbed somewhere in Tirana. But, I would like just to give an advice, the only place, or the only way a foreigner can be robbed in Tirana is in the bills of telephones of international hotels. And this is really serious, because they charge you in a way you have never imagined and they then hide behind this stereotype in Albania.

But guess what. Since 1991, following the changes that took place in Albania from a country that was not allowed for foreigners, because it was a country seen as the North Korea of Europe and at the only ones who could arrive at the international airport, or the only people who could enter the country were the Marxist and Leninist groups. And guess what? There was a barber shove the beard, or cut hair of any member of these Marxist and Leninist delegations, who could have his hair longer than normal. Karl Marx himself could not enter Albania, because he had long hair. He would have had first to go to the barber and have his hair cut like me before entering Albania. Since 1991, we opened up Albania. We went through many tough moments and also experienced deep crisis. We experienced the fall of the so-called pyramidal schemes, with the country burned and thousands of people killed. But no foreigners were threatened and none of them was ever touched. It has never happened. This comes from our distant past in the history, our earliest constitution, our Kanun, our earliest common law, on whose first paragraph is stipulated: “Before the house belongs to the Albanian, it first belongs to God and the guest and as long as God won’t show up, then the guest is a God.”

So, you are all Gods, until you take the plane and fly back home, because you are our guests. The only thing I would advise you to stay alert is to watch out for your phones while staying at international hotels, because fees are extremely high.

I would like to join the chair and our very respected Commissioner to say the same words about the honourable Giovanni Buttarelli, whom I have had the chance to meet. But when I met him I didn’t know he was so important and, above all, he was so much respected by an entire community. It is an honour for me to pay tribute to him from this podium, and express my deepest gratitude for whatever he has done and express also gratitude for whatever you are doing at such a difficult moment for our civilization, which is facing the most threatening attack on the personal data, personal life, private life and privacy and your right to have your intimate world.

I don’t actually know whether you will succeed in your fight and if we all will succeed in combating this epidemic disease that is being spread and is every day taking over parts of our minds, parts of our heats and is recreating our own being. And this is happening without us being aware of it. In the meantime, we have no other choice, but fight. If I was to use one word to define what is happening, I think we are living in an era of shamelessness, in an era when it is no longer shameful to act and say shameful things. So, I think shamelessness is the core of all these things and you are spearheading this fight.

Here I am supposed how much we are fighting, how great progress we have made, because I am the Prime Minister, but I am not going to take you on this path. Instead, I am going to simply say, thanks to the Commissioner, first and foremost – everyone knows I am not distinguished for congratulating making compliments to the people – and this not because I like him, but because he has really done a great job. We find ourselves at a completely different moment in terms of the personal data protection and privacy. But of course, despite we are today at a completely different place and we have made progress, yet this country is still vulnerable. I evaluate a lot this network, the know-how and expertize of this network, because at the end of the day everything has to do not with what we actually have, but what we do know. In terms of what we have, we would have to be rich and a wealthy country long ago. But in terms of what we know, we are aware that there is still a lot to learn and this is the most important part of our opening up to the world since the ‘90s through our channels of cooperation with all our international partners at all level, from the international bodies to networks like yours, or other sources of knowledge and expertise.

So, thank you for coming! Thank you for bringing your experience, expertise and your knowledge. And I am sure that from now on, when you go back to your own countries, you would add to the list of people, who tell their friends when they ask you – “You were visiting Albania? What the hell did you want in Albania? How come you are safe and sound, or still alive?” – you would tell them: “Hey people, I have seen things you won’t believe.”

And don’t forget what the chair said and what Giovanni also so clearly said in his speech via the video conference, that while we work to make the world a better place, it has a fundamental right to eat and  drink in a qualitative way. You have all this in Albania. So after you finish this great fight for the future of the world, I hope you have a great dinner and a great wine, under the auspices of our brilliant Commissioner.

Thank you!

* Simultaneous interpretation