There could be nothing better than celebrating friendship. Speech by Prime Minister Edi Rama at traditional year-end dinner with representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited to Tirana

Prime Minister Edi Rama hosted Thursday a dinner for the representatives of the diplomatic Corps accredited to Tirana on the occasion of the year-end holidays, sharing with them the impressions about the events during the outgoing year, as well as discussing joint projects due to be finalized together with the friendly and partner countries soon.

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What an incredible year is drawing to an end! When we met at the end of last year, none of us here or anywhere else could have ever imagined that 2022 would mark the return of war back to Europe. However, here we are still grappling with the consequences of the war that is destroying a European democratic country. But, in the meantime, it is also attempting to undermine confidence in the stability of our democratic countries, now under threat by consequences ranging from inflation to shocking energy prices. Tonight, our thoughts and prayers go out first and foremost to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian families for whom this is the most vexatious Christmas since World War II, as it causes solitude more than togetherness, gloom more than light, and fear more than happiness and celebration.

Let’s all pray for them every time we gather with our friends and families under the lights of the New Year tree in our cities or in our own homes. We will think and pray for them though we know that thoughts and prayers are not enough. Our nations and governments know that actions are needed more than words for Ukrainians and that is why since the very first day of the Russian aggression we have tried to support their cause for freedom and to relieve the terrible pain inflicted by 294 days of war. 

Albania will stand by Ukraine to the end. We are humbly honoured to have been given the privilege to support the righteous cause of the state of Ukraine as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Who could have imagined just a few years ago that Albania would sit up there together with a very few to debate the most important issues of the United Nations?

Who could have ever thought that Albania would be the first country picked to host the first Summit ever held outside the borders of the European Union. Both would be considered wild fantasies, the outcome of a highly adventurous, dare say, artistic mind, and yet both are a reality. Albania’s voice at the Security Council table has been heard since the beginning of the year.

Albania and its hosting of the EU Summit made the headlines as the year drew to a close. We are here to celebrate yet another special anniversary. Albania was accepted as a member of the United Nations exactly on this day, on December 14, 1955. 

What an incredible year for our foreign relations was 2022 and, since we are talking about the fortunate events, let’s not forget the opening of the accession talks with the EU. It’s another key date on our calendars, but in my view it stands out not simply because of its importance to our foreign relations. More than Albania’s relations with Europe this has to do with Albanians’ relations with their future. Thanks to this major accomplishment, Albania is closer to the future than it was at the beginning of this year. The ghosts of our past are a step away from us than they were earlier this year, but more than the ghosts that haunt and terrify us, they are beginning to look like witnesses to history. They are here for us to learn without fear.

Nobody would question the added value of Albania’s position on the international stage and no one can question Albania’s role in protecting this troubled region from its bad habit of producing more history than it can digest. We are proud and happy to have been asked by our great partner and friend Germany to host the Berlin Process Summit next spring. We see it as an appreciation and respect for what Albania is constantly doing to actively promote regional cooperation, peace and dialogue, closer ties with its Western Balkan neighbours, interactions between people and businesses from all our countries. 

We will do our best to live up to the task and host an unforgettable Berlin Process Summit, just as we hosted an EU summit that left a positive impression on all those who came to Tirana to participate, the leaders, staff, EU personnel, journalists, security personnel. I know, we all know. It is not a good year end for the normalization process between Kosovo and Serbia. The flare-up of tensions in Kosovo north is not only useless, but deeply troublesome. It is unbelievable that we have to constantly deal with the setting up of barricades, setbacks in the normalization process and U.S. and EU “fire brigades” rushing to save the machinery of dialogue from the flames of inciting and tense political rhetoric.

Most recently we came across requests formally made to NATO “to send Serbian troops to the north of Kosovo to protect the ethnic Serbs.” I understand that this may be another special smokescreen of political rhetoric, but it is as surreal as it would be if Kosovo would ask NATO to send Albanian troops to southern Serbia to protect ethnic Albanians there. All this is very far from what we need. We have headed into the third decade since Kosovo was freed once and for all from Belgrade. It will never be under Belgrade’s rule again.

All we need are three things only: dialogue, dialogue, and dialogue. The rest is just bad politics. I know pretty well this is easier said than done, but any short cut taken beyond the difficult, even painful dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, not only for them both, but for the whole region, leads to a very dangerous territory. We did not choose to live in this turbulent neighbourhood of Europe, which is called the Balkans, even if we could we would have replaced each other with other neighbours. First and foremost, there is no other place on this planet to move our country to, and secondly, every single one of our neighbors is here to stay. So we better learn, and learn quickly to cohabitate with each other, work with each other, help each other, and we better understand without wasting more decades that we have to do this, because it is the best thing we can do in our best interests. We need to keep the scourge of Russian war away from this region and while we will always stand firmly by the side of the Republic of Kosovo whenever its sovereign right to be governed by its own authorities is called into question in any form.

But in the meantime, we have no doubt that building bridges of cooperation with Serbia is not only the right thing to do, but it is something that serves our interests as a country and as a nation, and this promotes peace in a region where the phantoms of the past are ready to declare war on our common future.

2022 was an incredible year also because it surprised us, unfortunately, in a bad way, with a war that erupted, not only after a pandemic that was a common disaster, but also after an earthquake that was a curse upon us alone. And we were under the illusion it couldn’t be worse than this, but “voila” 2022 came with inflation and crazy energy prices that put every family and every business under pressure. I think we have successfully withstood to date and we have avoided that the electricity bills for the Albanian households and small businesses serve Vladimir Putin’s goal to bring the countries in Russia’s west to their knees. The electricity prices remain unchanged for the embassies of your wealthy countries!

It was impossible to do the same with the inflation, yet we succeeded in maintaining the region’s lowest inflation rate. Most importantly one should never forget that Ukraine is not the ultimate goal of Putin’s war, but jus the obvious target, as the goal is to force the Euro-Atlantic community to sit down with him and negotiate Europe’s entire security architecture. He is not winning in Ukraine and he is not succeeding in Europe to date, but it would be at least naive to believe that 2023 will be easier than 2022 in this regard. On the contrary, it can be tougher, even much more difficult. As if all the burdens of the Russian aggression on Ukraine and our economies were not enough, Albania also faced a serious cyber attack from the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Thanks to the fact that we had a certain response and readiness level and thanks primarily to our American friends and partners who came and fought along with us for weeks, the cyber attack failed to achieve its terrible objective of totally destroying our digital infrastructure, to hack all our digital data.

It is not a pleasure for me not to welcome the Iranian ambassador today. He was attending the same year-end meeting last year and freezing our diplomatic ties with Iran was not an easy decision. Iran is a great nation, with an outstanding great culture, and today I would like to salute with full admiration the courage that Iranian girls and women are showing to the world as they struggle to return to their faces the sunlight that has been taken hostage by an era of darkness.

I strongly wish that sooner rather than later, in one way or another we can begin reconstructing the detached build between our two countries. In the meantime, I can’t help but rejoice the fact that the bridges with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan significantly strengthened this year and I would like to wholeheartedly thank the leaders of these countries, who have not only generously offered me their special friendship, but have manifested not only through words, but also through deeds their genuine interest in taking their relations with Albania to a new level.

I am fully confident that Durres magnificent marina project is just an initial concrete step on the path towards major plans, where we are jointly working on energy, tourism and trade. Another ambassador was with us last year, a great friend of this country who represented our destination, the European Union, our good friend Luigi, who could not be replaced today by his devoted successor, Christiane, because of a temporary health condition. I wish her a speedy recovery, but she can rest and not feel worried because the health of our relationship with the EU has never been better.

Honourable friends, 

There could be nothing better than celebrating friendship. It is heart-warming to realize that Albania’s friendships have grown up and have become stronger, but it is also equally difficult to grant all the friends here their deserved space to deliver a festive speech like this. I very much hope that you not only won’t be upset that I’m not listing all your friendly countries one by one, not because I don’t want to say how much I value our friendship, but because I don’t want you to go to sleep hungry! So let me thank you all for your work and wish you all a great 2023, with fewer worries and more celebrations like this one.

May God bless you and your families, your countries and definitely your love for Albania!

Cheers! Let food, drink, music and dance now begin!