Prime Minister Edi Rama’s public communication following the publication of the Progress Report of the European Commission: 

 

Albania has just ushered in a new era in its history of statehood.

We are no longer just a country aspiring to become like the rest of Europe, as we used to be for 24 years since December ’90; not just a candidate country for European Union membership as we were from 2014 to date.

Today we have gone through the historic challenge of working our way up a new ladder as a country and as people. We have been recommended by the European Commission without any reservation as a country that can and must sit on the table of the negotiations to join the family of the member states of the United Europe.

I am so excited – those who deal with my breathing probably sense it – but I am also very proud because we succeeded in this extremely hard test.

We gave Albania a new status in the international arena and we finally came out of another crossroads between past and future.

Now it is already clear to all that the path beyond the crossroads we were at so far, no matter how bumpy, no matter how tough and lengthy it might be, is now all open to us.

The next station at the end of this path is membership of the European Union and the speed of arrival at that station depends first and foremost on us, on all of us!

I am excited because Albania has received today the highest international appreciation in the course of almost thirty years of efforts, achievements and failures, ups and downs and resilience.

I would like to sincerely express respect and gratitude to all of those who before us, some more and some less, gave a hand with building a part of the sole pathway of the Albanian future, the path towards the European Union.

But, at the same time, I feel very proud today because we succeeded with great confidence, determination and great pain and through bold reforms and undeniable results (but also particularly difficult moments when we have risked not least and sometimes even making mistakes in the name of good intentions).

We have succeeded in restoring the confidence of our people in us, in two achievements of historical importance for the future.

In the first year of the first term of office we made Albania a candidate country for membership of the EU. In the first year of the second term in office, we just fulfilled the ambition of obtaining a genuine, clear, straightforward recommendation for the opening of accession negotiations for Albania’s EU membership.

These are not gifts. These are neither European Commission’s gestures of generosity towards Albania. The United Europe does not make gifts, and Brussels is ruthless machinery that sees and recognizes sees and knows the merits only.

The recommendation to open the accession talks with the European Union comes in recognition of our merits on the tough battlefield to build state pushing through real reforms and genuine fight against the enemies of the state and the society, crime and corruption.

The recommendation to open the accession negotiations with the EU doesn’t mark the end of these battles, neither finally settling the score with crime and corruption, but it is the beginning of a new, even more difficult stage of reforms and further escalation of the fight against crime and corruption.

I believe, among the many examples we can site, the justice system reform is the most meaningful to everyone to distinguish between the stage we already closed and the new stage which just has begun by receiving the recommendation.

While receiving the today’s recommendation to open the accession talks required us to legitimize vetting and provide initial evidence of our will to cleanse the justice system of corrupt judges and prosecutors, in the years ahead we must unequivocally prove the punitive power of the cleansed justice system over whoever has to pay for the wrongdoing at the expense of the country and ordinary people of this country.

Judges and prosecutors who are removed from the justice system because they fail the vetting process, politicians who have successfully escaped a corrupt and captured justice for so many years, the notorious perpetrators of the organized crime world, who have washed their bloodstained hands of with the soap of justice, or any “strongmen” of cities and neighbourhoods, who have learned to enter the police station through the door and leave the courthouse through the window, must pay for their crimes and be equally liable just as the culprits of all sorts do in each member state of the European Union.

The negotiations period is the period of ultimately separating wheat from chaff in every aspect of the life of a country seeking membership in the common European family. It is the period of deepening the newly launched modernization of the state and the consolidation of the democratic institutions and the rule of law. It is the period of assuming full responsibility by all members of the society to fulfil their duties at every level of participation in the common social life.

As such this is far from being an easy period. On the contrary, it will be a period full of major challenges for all, primarily for the elect officials, for the government and the opposition, but primarily for the government of course.

Our hand is again stretched today to reach out to the opposition and, in front of all Albanians, Socialists and Democrats, but above all on behalf of all the children of Albania, I invite the opposition and its leader, not to confuse “the Albanian clashes” on everything dividing us internally, but join us in this common national challenge, which, today more than ever, requires that when we talk in a foreign language, let’s not point to each other, but like Albanians become masters of Albania’s European future.

But we will have all the time needed to talk, understand and reflect over the severe challenges of this new era of our common history.

Let us all rejoice on this marked day, which enters into the history of our almost thirty years of effort of making Albania like the rest of all Europe.

There is no doubt that as Prime Minister and leader of the Socialist Party, I feel privileged to have be here today on this special day for the Albania we want.

But I don’t read the long-awaited recommendation for opening the EU accession negotiations as a triumph and victory of one political side over other political sides.

Because this is not the victory for a party that fought at all cost against other parties that sought to postpone this day indefinitely. This is neither a victory for a government that put forth sincere effort pursuing this strategic objective of Albania over an opposition that did whatever it could in its commitment to make this objective impossible.

Today it is our homeland the one to win, although prejudiced and humiliated for years long and vilified across Europe through half-truths that are often more bitter than lies themselves.

All Albanians anywhere in the homeland or abroad have won today.

Today it is Albania that has earned a new status in the society of the European nations and is today closer to Europe than yesterday.

Today it is the mast of the red and black flag of Skenderbe and Ismail Qemali that has climbed another rung on the yet bumpy and long uphill ladder towards the room of the European united family.

And allow me dare today and tell you with my conviction stronger than ever that just like we passed two consecutive tests, one more extraordinary than the other, by overcoming unusual obstacles, those known and but unspoken, we will also make it to the third – the hardest of the three.

We will fulfil supreme will of Skenderbej, the renaissance men, heroes and war martyrs, martyrs and victims of dictatorship, of all those known and unknown Albanians who lived and gave what they had for this country without seeing it in the place it deserves.

I’m convinced we will make Albania an integral part of the world where the sun is where the sun rises and sets.

Nowadays, this means, Albania a member state of the European Union.

Thank you very much!