Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at XVIII Conference of Speakers of Parliaments of the Adriatic and Ionian Initiative:

Thank you very much and I would like to most cordially welcome you all to this event, where I have been granted the honour to deliver this speech, very much hoping I won’t  upset you. It is an interesting new day as just yesterday we learned the two Europa Conference League finalists as the final match is set to be played in Albania for the first time ever.

The Adriatic and Ionian Initiative is just something adding up to the ever increasing number of initiatives aimed at promoting peace and development at a time of ample and extraordinary opportunities to demand and make sure that these initiatives are really translated into real changes and transformations in the lives and wellbeing of our citizens.

What is happening now in Europe, not far away from us here, in Ukraine, is an incredible lesson we should all learn to move forward on pathway towards strengthening peace, strengthening cooperation to avoid by any means falling into the traps of the past, and the deeper you move into the Balkans the deeper such traps run. Drawing a lesson from this war would actually be a precious lesson for each and every one of us and this is a crucial moment in history to make whatever we can and whatever it takes to move forward, to do whatever we can to strengthen regional cooperation to build as many as new bridges of cooperation as possible, bridges of interaction and people to people exchange, bridges of cooperation between the communities of business, arts and culture and among nations.

On the other hand, it is quite important for us to do everything we can to turn this cooperation into an added value as we make efforts to further explore the immense untapped potentials of our countries.

All our countries are in the process of integrating into the European Union and we have learned it the hard way. It is actually not an easy process at all, even sometimes a neurotic process. As we speak, Albania is going through a really very bizarre situation, being hostage of an impasse between our neighbour, North Macedonia, and the friendly country, Bulgaria. It is one of the situations the European Union can create only and there is no book or a mature explanation on how to handle it. How can one become a hostage to the disagreements of two countries? But that’s how it is… as Donald Trump used to say.

Therefore we need to move forward, we should not lose patience, but most importantly we shouldn’t lose passion for Europe. For us, Europe is what it was for its founding fathers, a genuine peace and security project.

For some bigger and wealthier countries, Europe is just an automated teller machine, but not for us. For us Europe remains a place of peace and security and not only that, but Europe is also our first choice we have ever made on our free will in history.

Europe is our first choice on our free will.

There are a lot of things we have to learn from you, but we also have a lot to give to this initiative and the region, and we are incredibly committed to doing so. We want to promote peace and cooperation in every possible way we can, we want to build new bridges in all areas we can.

There are no favours for us to incite divisions, there are no favours if we incite tensions or cause troubles. We need to work together to make the lives of our people better, we need to work together to make the Balkans a place where our children can just embrace and feel good about each other, feel good at being together. You can’t pick your neighbours.