Prime Minister Edi Rama:

Distinguished Rector

Very dear Federica,

Dear students,

It is truly a profound honour to stand here in this extraordinary space where the spirit of Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Altiero Spinelli, and so many others still resonates.

But let me confess to you something. I hesitated to come because standing here in Bruges is far more difficult than standing in Brussels. It means standing in front of history, in front of legends, in front of ghosts that whisper to every soul in every corridor. And it’s not easy to survive the confrontation with such ghosts who, let’s be honest, are all much better speakers than most of us alive. But in the end, I am here, and why did I come?

Because this college is not only a temple of knowledge, it is a laboratory of Europe itself. I told myself, well, Bruges is not Brussels. You don’t go to Bruges to repeat clichés and to report on benchmarks and interim and post and whatever, all this neurotic puff. But you go to Bruges to speak freely to some yet free minds.

So, let’s go.

In his notes for me, our French-taste and German rigour ambassador to the EU, Ferit Hoxha, here in the first row, wrote. This city, Bruges, has always been more than bricks and canals for centuries. It has been a crossroads of trade, culture, and ideas, once called the Venice of the North. Today, thanks to this college, it is also the beating intellectual heart of Europe. And I can tell it feels so right away when you just cross the door.

Generations of leaders, diplomats, and thinkers have walked these halls, and Federica was showing me the portraits that you see every day passing by. And some of you, hopefully, will one day become EU commissioners or ministers or prime ministers or maybe even presidents of EU countries or of the EU itself. And maybe your portrait will be in the corridor.

I hope that before any further knowledge, you carry forward the European spirit that Jean Monnet captured in one line, ‘We are not forming coalitions of states, we are uniting men.’’ It’s hard to explain to me how easily this spirit is undermined, buried even, especially in moments of crisis when it looks so much easier to count borders separating men than to build bridges connecting them.

My dear young friends, just yesterday over WhatsApp with a dear friend, the legendary mayor of Athens and former EU commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, he wrote to me what times we are living through, my dear Edi, and what more we shall witness before this era comes to a close. History reminds us that the passage into a new one will be painful. He is right. We belong to a generation that started life under lunacy on power, dictatorship disguised as order, fear disguised as normality and isolation disguised as sovereignty, that experienced tattooed in our memory how fragile freedom is. And we feel it nowadays.

 

I was born, raised, and lived half of my life in Cold War Albania, cut off from the West and from the East, North Korea of Europe, literally. For me, Europe was not a reality. It was a myth. Imagine a vast black sky and then suddenly a very pale star, a forbidden Italian channel, a Yugoslav broadcast, a trembling signal of Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, a constellation glimpsed through static, a dreaming black and white that flashed on a TV screen and then disappeared again and again, endlessly. Then came 1989, but Albania did not join the party.

The Berlin Wall fell, but our wall remained intact. We were equally cut off from the capitalist West and the collapsing East. And our guys always told us, we are not like them, we are different, we are real, we are true, they are fake, degenerated. While others opened borders, we stayed locked in our bunker, a bunker of our own making, and proudly so, we were told.

Only in the summer of 1990, when thousands of desperate people jumped the embassy walls in Tirana, did the first cracks appear. And suddenly Europe was no longer just a star flashing on a TV screen through forbidden channels. It was there, within reach.

The transition that followed was messy, painful, often chaotic and even tragic, following Ponzi schemes, thousands of dead in an uprising for savings gone to smoke. A dictatorship can collapse, yes, at the end it collapses in weeks, but democratic institutions, the rule of law, take decades. I’ll never forget an episode with Jusuf Vrioni, an Albanian aristocrat, one of the most cultivated minds I’ve ever met in my life. The cosmopolitan translator of Ismail Kadare in French, who spent long years in prison under communism. He was a good friend and a privilege to be with.

In the year following the end of communism, in one of our conversations, I said to him, Jusuf, How come you don’t seem happy for democracy coming to Albania? And he looked at me and said, democracy? He smiled. No, democracy has not come yet to Albania, he said, freedom, yes. And I’m happy, of course, to live it at my advanced age and have the right to finally vote while many friends died, some in prison, some in disgrace, without ever knowing it. I’m lucky, but democracy is more than freedom. It is the rule of law.

So I hope, he added, that when you’re my age, you will be lucky to see democracy work. I think of Jusuf very often. He was right. And thank God there is the EU. Without the EU, we might still be waiting 100 years to build institutions, the rule of law, and to have democracy work. That is the blessing we in Albania and in the region have. And those in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere we went to spread the good words of democracy did not have. Because the EU is not only a union of economists, it’s the most sophisticated machine of know-how transfer for democratic institution-building ever created by man.

This is why, whatever it takes, one should stick with the EU through frustrations, delays, frozen smiles, and freezing, sometimes humiliating meetings. We kept going until it became warmer, more predictable and with no delays. And it’s sad to think about why, thanks to Vladimir Putin. But even if things get back to normal on that front and the cold hits again in our front, we’ll keep going. Because the alternative is not another union. It is a non-union. There is no way out. And history has taught us that outside Europe, small nations become great.

Yes, I know these are not the best days for democratic Europe and for the EU itself. War has returned with Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine. Global competition is undermining Europe’s economic and technological leadership. Climate change is no longer a prophecy. There’s a fire already burning in the forests of Europe and flooding the streets of Europe. Polarisation and disinformation corrode the very oxygen of democratic trust. The rules-based order is mocked openly from every corner. And multilateralism, once the sacred promise of coexistence, today breathes through a respirator. This is the world we live in. And in this world, standing idle is not an option. And in this world, standing idle is not an option. Unity is not a luxury. It is survival. As Vaclav Havel said, ‘’the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart.’’ The same applies to Europe. Its salvation lies in its heart. And its heart can carry on only through unity. And here, let me be a bit provocative. Russia goes to war to take Ukraine. Ukraine has to be taken only by Europe. And Europe says. You are not ready for us. How absurd is this? And take security. An incomplete Europe invites threats. Take prosperity. Enlargement grows markets. Boosters supply chains. Drives innovation. The contrary does exactly the contrary. Values. It shows Europe is a set of principles. Rule of law, democracy, human rights, not just borders. Jacques Delors, who is very closely connected to all of you through this college, said Europe is a tale of willpower, not inevitability. We need that willpower for uniting Europe.

I don’t really understand the word enlargement when it comes to Albania or to the Western Balkans. Because when a body, an object or a house enlarges, it means it increases its perimeter. While we are not outside the perimeter of Europe today. We are in Europe. So, more than enlargement is reunification. It’s a full integration of its own body.

Don’t forget that the European Union is the first reality in the history of maps and of geopolitics with two borders. One outside border and one inside border. And inside the inside border is us, the Balkans. Like a fetus in the belly of a pregnant woman. So, I think we are finally on the right track. And I am sure that Federica is now more relaxed. Relieved because she left Brussels with an inner promise of never returning, and came to Bruges to find refuge, refuge in the eyes and in the hearts of a younger generation. But I’m sure that when she started to work and looked at the first students she met, she felt really pity for them, thinking, Oh my God, you don’t know what life is out there for whoever dreams to get something done in Brussels. Things have changed.

Things have changed, but the European Union is two words connected with one, which is peace. And peace has been the reason for its birth. Peace has been the reason for its existence. Peace must be the reason for its future. And how can we let this amazing creature built as a peace project turn into a war machine? A European peace plan is missing, big time. And it feels really frustrating to see the 27 or more than 27, including us, waiting somewhere outside the perimeter of our lives to find a solution for us.

Europe needs a plan that should provide security guarantees for Ukraine, should design a clear path for its full unification, and also keep the door open for Russia’s eventual inclusion in a broader vision for stability in the future, while strengthening Europe’s global influence now, by positioning it as a central force for diplomacy, cooperation, and peace building on the world stage.

Now, let me bring you closer to home. 30 years ago, Albania was the continent’s forgotten 80, locked away, isolated, despised. Today, Albania is here. It just came after having opened the other four chapters in 11 months. We have practically opened 28, and there are five more to be opened, hopefully within this year, which is a record in the pace of integrations of countries. And it’s a speed that surprises even Brussels’ bishops and priests. And believe me, surprising priests in Brussels is harder than surprising God himself. So we have rebuilt our judiciary through a very radical vetting process, something never attempted before in Europe. We aligned our economy with a single market, embraced the green agenda, modernised transport and digital infrastructure.

Yesterday, our commissioner, Marta Kos, showed everywhere an EU Commission barometer on how much the nations of the Balkans support Europe, the EU, and enlargement. And to her surprise, and to the surprise of everyone who gets to know it, Albania’s support is 92%. But I told her, listen, it was the same for the Ottoman Empire, 92%, it was the same for the Soviet Empire, 92%. We are loyal to empires. And we are loyal to friendship. So to every one of you, I give advice: make sure to have an Albanian friend. Make sure. You may never meet him or her, but one day, in one hour, when you want someone with you, the Albanian will be the first to run for you. Federica knows it, that’s why she wants an Albanian passport.

So, in a sweet revenge, really, against our past, Albania is now one of the most visited countries in Europe, 12 million visitors in a year for a country with 2.4 million residents. It’s quite big. And these people are finally spreading out the voice that our country is not a gloomy, sunny, less criminalised place where your best chance is to get robbed, and your worst is to get raped. Nothing of that is Albania. On the contrary, all of them coming from all over Europe are realising that Albania is the country with the lowest rate of home robbery in Europe.

The United Kingdom is leading. They say, yeah, because Albanians have come to us. This is what happens when you leave the European Union. You speak a lot of nonsense. Take some chamomile before listening to him, not to get fully depressed. So if you are not one of them coming, please run, come. You will see for yourself that it’s a country worth visiting.

It’s a country where I have never met anyone who has come and has not wanted to come back. Even ambassadors of EU countries who leave to go to other missions dream of coming back to Albania. It’s a fact. And one of them was a Danish ambassador who applied to come back to Albania through you while he was nominated general secretary of Denmark in the embassy in Beijing. And I was very surprised that he wanted to come back to Albania, leave China. And I wrote to him, I said, Yes, what’s going on? What’s wrong with you? He said, Edi, you don’t get it. Once you have been in Albania, even China is a joke. Which is true.

Albania is committed to the process. But one thing is sure, that we are really committed, and Federica used to teach me that this is called the merit-based process. And everyone repeats, you know, merit-based process. I think it’s a marriage-based process. So a lot of work to have a very clear contract. And it’s such a long contract that just look at Britain. When you want to divorce, it’s a terrible idea because you are never free from that marriage. And you get more and more insane. So better marry, stay in, behave, and enjoy the good company.

As I said before, and I repeat, the truth is that since Putin invaded Ukraine, the process became real. In the sense that the EU finally not only understood by words, but acted by deeds, pushing for faster integration and realising something fundamental that we were saying all the time. It’s not something that you should do for us. It’s something that you should do for itself. Exactly for the same reason that the anti-enlargement chunks of societies are saying no, security, for its own security. And now it’s very clear. The war in Ukraine shattered delusions. It reminds us of something Europe once knew very well. Peace is never permanent. It must be defended every day. And it must be a guiding force in daily life without needing to have a war to realise how precious it is.

And enlargement, reunification, as I say, is part of that defence. But it’s not only defence, it’s opportunity. Every enlargement was feared. Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Central Europe, and every time enlargement became a motor of growth. Today, with new rising powers, China, India, Brazil, younger, hungrier, faster, Europe is not only in danger of shrinking politically, but it risks falling behind economically and becoming irrelevant.

To stay relevant, Europe must get bigger and more cohesive and must think in terms of a market that, if you bring together all the democratic countries of Europe, which are part of the European Political Council, makes a really very strong force for growth and for change. So the lessons are very clear.

The point is, will they be taken seriously? And delay is dangerous, very dangerous. I saw Mario Draghi repeating it very loudly. Ambiguity breeds frustration, and the frustration goes all over, down to the average normal people. Frustration breeds nationalism, and nationalism spreads all over. And in the Balkans, we are in a much better place. But now we are very, very preoccupied about the Balkanization of Europe.

To conclude, I will bring here another big European call. Helmut Kohl said, ” Europe will be our future, or it will not be at all.’’ That remains true. And for Europe to be Europe, reunification and enlargement should be a must. Growth and peace should be the wings that are never closed, but kept always up and up and up. Otherwise, there will be no Europe. And every step forward, the history of the EU tells us, came in moments of danger. From the coal and steel, to Rome, to the single market, to the euro, to the big bang of enlargement.

So today, our biggest enemy is fragmentation in a very volatile world. And our best answer is unity through purpose, solidarity, and the staunch conviction that peace is what we are, in this part of the world, supposed to work for. No war.

So let us build a strong Europe, as it is in your dreams, and unafraid of its own destiny. The good news is that Albania is ready. Europe must answer the call, and all together we must make it rise to the challenge. Never forgetting for peace, for prosperity, for security, meaning for its future.

Thank you very much.