Prime Minister Edi Rama addresses the Western Balkans Forum Investment Opportunities in a Fast-Growing Region hosted by the Financial Times in London.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you for this opportunity!
It feels very good to come from the Balkans to a new Western Balkan country like Britain and it also feels very good to take part in this very prestigious platform of yours and talk about ourselves and the region. I think we are going through an interesting time. We are witnessing a period of important reforms in the region, yielding quite significant numbers that show change is course is clearly not enough.
As for Albania, we are working very hard to press ahead with our justice system reform in a way that would give the country a much stronger position when it comes to give, not only our citizens, but also foreign investors, maximum guarantee, as well as maximum productivity in their own investment.
And, at the same time of course, we know very well that it should be a combination between our natural resources, especially oil, minerals, the hydro power and energy, as well as the country’s coastline in terms of attracting investment in tourism industry. Most recently, we had very good news from SHELL, suggesting it has found important onshore reserve of very high quality oil, which gives a very strong prospective in that direction. At the same time, we have a series of very important investments in our onshore and offshore gas pipeline and I hope it would materialize very soon. Our tourism sector figures are growing each year. So, we are doing pretty well in terms of fighting unemployment. As the last year’s World Bank report mentioned we have scored good results, but of course at the end we are very clear that what has been done is not enough and need to do much more in order to ensure faster growth.
I think the potential lies in more and stronger regional cooperation and more regional interaction and I am pretty convinced that if we will have the wisdom and the strength to move forward our regional cooperation and if we would open up a new chapter by simply turning this obsessive history and obsessive politics of borders into a completely new approach and create a new Schengen-like Western Balkan area and transform the borders from a reason to fight and inflame politics in totally fluid points of convergence, we will undoubtedly open up to much bigger opportunities and we will explore an important part of unexplored part of our potential.
Regarding the efforts to improve standards of business regulation around the region and Albania in particular, is it important to have a clear goal of European Union membership to keep up the reform effort on the specific question of business regulation? Is there a kind of limit at time in which enthusiasm for that effort would last?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I would say there is a reason that has defined the speed of the integration from the communist era to the European Union era and there is a reason why countries like Poland, the Czech Republic or Slovakia and other countries have been much faster than countries like ours and this reason has to do with the past and has to do with the history of their institutions. They had much easier time to reconnect with the history of their state institutions after the abrupt collapse of communism.
In our region, the history of institutions is far less generous, I would say to be euphemistic, and for us, the European integration is a process of building the institutions, a process of building the state, and not a process of reconnection as it was the case for the other countries I mentioned that reconnected faster, but to connect with the future. So, if I might say, the integration process is even more important than the membership itself, because it is the only mechanism, the only roadmap and the only unique and irreplaceable instrument to kind of build a functioning state with all the elements that would guarantee the rights and would guarantee everyone and that would make sure that the state works for the citizens. So, once you have such a state, then you can do what actually Great Britain did, you can leave, but first you need to have it. So, it is like marriage. It doesn’t matter. Everyone can tell you that it is not as fantastic as it looks like, but it doesn’t matter, because you want it.
By the way, what is happening in Great Britain is showing that the divorce is much more difficult than the marriage itself. So, I would say, yes, the European Union prospective is a must for us. On the other hand, Ana touched it a bit, and that is the hypocrisy. And there is a lot of hypocrisy and there is a lot of, I would say, a lot of humiliation, because it is less and less about what we do and it is increasingly more about the inner dynamics in different European member states. It is less and less about how much we fit with the benchmark and the criteria and it is increasingly more about elections here and elections there. By the way, today Zoran mentioned he is expecting something positive to happen. But we are different. He is incurable optimistic, I am tragically optimistic, so there is a difference.
The thing is why the European Commission’s report this time was released at the end of May? That was because of the European elections. Why the hell the report on how we did and performed on this and that has to do with the European elections? Because, if the report was to be released earlier with a clear recommendation for us, this would then have made Madame Le Pen feel energized to go after more black sheep and dangerous ghosts in the horizon. This is one of the many examples of how things are becoming less and less predictable and increasingly more unfair. And, by the way, it is clear that every country that comes after has to do more at the same phase than other countries have done earlier, because of the growing demands. However, at the end of the day, it is the only way. If you would ask me whether we have an alternative way or if we could escape from this, I would answer: No, we don’t. So, even the EU disappears tomorrow, we would do the same thing, because we need to build the justice system, we need to build not only credible legislation, but also credible law enforcement institutions. Because we need to go from what has been written on the books to what is the real life of people.
As such, the European Union is a bless. It is something that makes us different from countries that are far away and makes different the life and prospective of our young people. What is the difference from a young boy in Skopje, Belgrade or Tirana and a young boy in Mosul, Kandahar or elsewhere? It is Europe! It is the fact that this young boy lives in a space where there is future, prospective and where there is a chance to dream big.
It is really an effort worth doing and we are going all the way with all the disappointment, with all the humiliation, hypocrisy and all the double standards it takes. Look at the Netherlands. They are very much enthusiastic about going after Albanians in every election they hold. A week ago, I read a big headline: “Albanian gangster eliminated” and after reading the article it turned out the gangsters were Belgians, Moroccans, Dutch and only two Albanian nationals. But all of them were seen as if being Albanians and everything was focused on Albania. So it is all about the ill wishing European politics of today.
Thank you very much! I am sure the audience will take on board what are you saying about marriages and divorces.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: No, no. Brexit is very revealing on that. And divorcing may take different stages. I am speaking from my own experience. But divorcing from Europe seems to be a nightmare. It is the kind of wife you can’t divorce and even worse.
Is there a national consensus in Albania?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: While I was speaking I was thinking, how many people in the parliaments of the EU member states know that our countries in the Western Balkans are surrounded by the EU borders. My guess, very few of them know it, because when the speak and listen about EU enlargement they have this imagination “Oh my God.” It Turkey and then Ukraine, and after Ukraine is Serbia and then Albania, and the North Macedonia and then we arrive in the border with China. These are people who sometimes really don’t know what they are talking about. We are within the EU borders; we are surrounded by the EU borders. And by the way, during the refugee crisis what happened is that the refugees entered the EU through Greece and got out of the EU through the then Macedonia and now North Macedonia, and they changed name because want to be in the EU. Can you imagine to ask Brits change their name of the Kingdom to remain?! The refugees then continued to Serbia and entered the EU again through Croatia. So, it is an organ of the same body, but dragged out of the body and bleeding and now…it is impossible to cut it, because it is part of this very body. The decision is either you have it together with all its potential infections – there should be a reason as to why the World War Two started from this organ and then inflamed the whole body – or you just assume it and integrate it. Secondly, yes we need to think that regionally there is still much more to be done.
And now consensus, yes. We in Albania are the most pro-European people. Our Euro-optimism is bigger than Zoran Zaev’s optimism, I mean as a population. We have both Muslims and Christians. Our Muslims are undoubtedly more Europeans than the voters of Marine Le Pen. So consensus is very much there and there could be no anti-European parties in Albania, just like there could be no communist parties in Albania, although we have had the most brutal communist party in Europe. Such parties would attract neither attention, nor support in Albania. When you look at Albania through pictures today, one might think “Oh my God, it is not the place to go and invest or a place to go to swim. It is indeed. What’s happening is not the people revolting, but just a political setup and protests can be part of our tourist package, and people can come because protests take place like open air concerts on Saturdays at eight o’clock. So if you want to see a protest, you can book a place in the surrounding area and it is not the whole country in flame, but just a bunch of people along the boulevard, who come and do their things like throwing Molotov cocktails, and stones, but if you stay in a reasonable distance you would enjoy such things you wouldn’t find elsewhere in Europe.
So, I invite you all to come to Albania and invest. And by the way, it is in our tradition, in our first Constitution, the Kanun, there is a very strong line that has defined our relationship with the foreigners and has also defined the beauty of the country for every foreigner. “The house belongs to God and the guest,” which means that if you are part of the house and not a guest, you can be in trouble, but if you are a guest you would never find yourself in troubles. So if you are a local investor you may run into troubles, but if you are a foreign investor you face no troubles, since you are the guest and you are a God there. So you should come. You would also find beautiful additional things there. So, now of course it is not Germany, it is not Switzerland, but if you are looking for boredom you can go there, if looking for excitement, then come to us.
