In the course of his visit to Austria, Prime Minister Edi Rama was invited along with the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer to attend the Wachau European Forum with motto of this year’s event being “Safeguarding Europe’s future and EU Enlargement.” PM Rama delivered a speech at the Forum’s plenary session: 

“I find this place as a perfect venue to discuss Europe and the Western Balkans; in this kind of crossroad, with some steps leading you up and others leading you down, while we are in the very middle. And yes, we can bring each other up, but we can also take each other down. Some people understand it really well, some others need a stronger push to realize it, because as a matter of fact the EU needs the Balkans now as much as the Balkans needs the EU.

So after all these nice words been said, I am afraid I have to be a bit bitter as I have to speak about the European Union now. First and foremost, I have to say that I feel sorry for the EU. I feel really sorry. 

Many people commented on what I said at the press conference and what we expressed after the Summit, describing my remarks as expression of a high level of frustration.

After being there for four hours, along with all the leaders of these wonderful countries and after having looked at them, listened to them we just felt their powerlessness in front of a surreal situation, with a NATO country, Bulgaria, kidnapping two other NATO members, North Macedonia and Albania, right in the middle of a war, a hot war at the border of Europe, trying to find out historical uncertainties under the watch of 26 other countries that can do nothing. Yesterday, the Bulgarian parliament voted something that I hope would be sufficient for our friends in North Macedonia, but I would like to stress that this is not just about Bulgaria. Bulgaria is only the ultimate extreme expression of the crooked spirit of EU enlargement.

There is something deeper that is lost and needs to be recovered soon.

In our part of the world – and by the way our part of the world is surrounded by the EU Borders and, guess what, the European Union is the only is the first ever geographical reality in the history of the maps with two borders, an outward and inward border, whereas in the middle there is this part of the world named the Balkans, about which I think Austria is among the very few to have a very clear idea and to have a very firm vision that independently from the internal affairs Austria has never betrayed. It is not the same for others.

So what happened with Bulgaria was a symbol of how EU enlargement has been transformed into a vehicle to kidnap other countries for their own internal problems.

We are very happy that Ukraine was awarded the EU candidate status, but I hope that Ukrainians won’t have a lot of illusions about what they were granted, because they received just an anti-depressant pill which is good for the morale and for the hormones for a while.

Albania is a EU candidate country for eight years now and it is not enough. I hope it won’t be 117 years for Ukraine, but it is of course a path where you should deliver, where you need to reform. Although Ukrainians are doing something that is beyond reforming their country, they are doing something huge as they stopping someone that is seeking to counter-reform the world order. And that’s why Ukrainians deserved it and that’s why it was great that the EU did it.

May be you have heard that this is called Berlin Process and we want to implement it and therefore we have already created the right vehicle called the Open Balkans.

At the end, I would like to mention the Chancellor about a moment we were talking about how historical issues when they are taken by politicians to be solved, these issues actually become more intricate and more complex than they really are and Chancellor told me that if Austria would have gone that way to try and open old historical issues and try to address them politically, this area here would have then been a much worse place than the Balkans, which of course I think it is impossible. This is because we in the Balkans have the quality you wouldn’t find in other regions of the world, as we can produce more history than we can digest and it goes on and on and on.

We are all victims of our history and sometimes we are also victims of our own self, yet we are good people, we are loyal people and we are crazy people too. So you better have us with you and so when you have us with you try to take the best from us; our way of being good, our way of being loyal and you can also use our craziness to deal with others.

Thank you very much!