During his visit to Estonia, Prime Minister Rama took part in discussions on strategic developments and Europe’s role in addressing new international challenges at the opening panel of the Lennart Meri Conference, one of the most important international forums dedicated to security, diplomacy, and the future of Europe.

Political leaders, international relations experts, and representatives of global institutions discussed current geopolitical challenges and the prospects for Euro-Atlantic cooperation during a period of major tensions and transformations in the international arena.

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Teri Schultz: My name is Teri Schultz. I’ve been covering the EU and NATO for as long as anybody can remember, a couple of decades and Estonia in particular since 1989. And that’s why I’m always so privileged to be here and grateful to be invited, especially today for this very high-pressure position to be opening the Lennart Meri conference this year with our panel, Bridge over troubled water.

I would like to welcome those of you joining us online and to any first-timers here at LMC, you are in for a treat. One of the hallmarks of this conference is that we speak very openly and candidly, respectfully, among friends. Everybody here knows a lot about what’s happening in the world and cares deeply about it, and that’s what makes LMC such a special event.

So, I’m going to introduce those people joining me on stage. Everybody will know our host, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, Thomas Dinanno, Boris Ruge, NATO Ambassador for Political Affairs and Security Policy, and Dr Jana Puglierin, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Thanks to all of you for being with me. We are both fortunate and brave to be kicking everything off here.

The title of this panel is interesting: “Bridge Over Troubled Water: The Next Chapter in Transatlantic Cooperation.” So you can see they spun it at the end with a bit of positivity and cooperation, not just the neutral relations. But in thinking about this and what this theme means, it occurred to me that we are often talking about the troubled water, and Kristen laid that out so we don’t need to go through all the reasons why the water is troubled. But more than at any time since, at least since I’ve covered the alliance, it’s the bridge that we’re talking about. It’s the bridge that we’re worried about. It’s no longer the indestructible iron path connecting Europe and the United States. And we talk more about that perhaps right now than about the problems in the water.

Teri Schultz: We have to give time to Edi Rama because you know why? Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Why?

Teri Schultz: We’ve already had the joke that he said if we didn’t want him to talk long, he shouldn’t have been invited. And we very much want him here.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Instead of dealing with you, I already knew you were going to do things like that. I want to make the best out of the short time you gave me.

First of all, I want to thank the Prime Minister for giving me the opportunity to finally, finally visit this country and this city.

Teri Schultz: Is it your first time?

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Yeah, it’s my first time. It’s a nice city. And I discovered that food is great here, which I didn’t expect. And on the other hand, I made sure to bring the sun here. I see that now I’m going to leave. It’s dark again, but sorry. Sorry, my friend. I can’t stay here longer.

So what was your question, because you didn’t ask a question, you just made the characterisation of me, so I didn’t say that you should not invite me, I said if you want people to speak shortly, don’t invite a man from the Balkans.

Teri Schultz: I’m sorry, I incorrectly attributed you to be speaking about yourself.

But my question to you is, further away from the Russian front line, the sort of existential crisis that the Baltic states, the Nordic states feel every day. What is the sentiment about NATO? How are you looking towards NATO 3.0 in Albania?

Again, a strong pro-NATO, pro-Atlanticist country traditionally is very pro-NATO. Is there anything that is shaking the Albanians’ faith right now in the solidarity of the Alliance, or do they feel like everything’s fine?

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Listen, Albanians are Western Taliban. So we are with the transatlantic alliance all the way, whatever it takes. By whatever it takes, I want to start because yesterday I had the honour to be in a very beautiful ceremony in Germany where they honoured Mario Draghi with the Charlemagne Prize. And he made a speech which made me think about the fact that it’s already two years since his report about Europe, and while the speech was more or less deepening in the same direction, what has happened in terms of action is not that much. And this is what is the basis of the main worry, if we can talk about worries. And I don’t want to provoke anyone here, but I just, I’m very tempted to make, not a parallel, but just to make a starting point from the Soviet Union in terms of things being understood, being perceived in a way or another, but not being addressed. But it’s tempting because there is a fundamental question to answer. Could Europe, under certain conditions, allow defence imperatives, geopolitical anxiety, and fragmented political responses to create a long-term imbalance between security ambition and what I would call civilizational resilience, which, in other words, means that we are facing a risk that security burden can distort economic priorities. Perceived strategic inferiority can trigger an overreaction. And then what is the most dramatic part of it, talking about the NATO 3.0 or whatever you call it, is that bureaucratic fragmentation weakens the response, which then brings to another point that deserves at least attention and discussion, which is that political legitimacy is undermined by the search for military strength, right?

So all these things make me worried about where Europe is going. Because instead of blaming and trying to reassess our position by showing our finger towards the United States or to President Trump. We need to make a real assessment and try to realise that the context has changed, but what the real answer will be. Because I don’t think that the real answer is to just lounge ourselves in overspending and not address the structural problem we have because we are many nations. Together, we are a big economy. But when it comes to the whole way we have to act and have to harmonise, then we are not anymore what we look at, when we are seeing like a mathematical, arithmetical sum of our GDPs.

So I will conclude, to your surprise, with a question which Europe, I think, has to ask, and is how much a civilisation can spend to secure itself without weakening the foundations that make it worth securing. Because we know very well that there are so many complex tasks and challenges that we need to address in parallel. And as Mario Draghi said yesterday, we have to reflect on a simple fact that we don’t have barriers with the world, and we are suddenly shocked that there are some tariffs

But we still have a lot of barriers within our own perimeter, which makes us not as strong as we want to appear when it comes to acting in the direction you wanted me to answer. Thank you so much.

Teri Schultz: Is the perception different in Albania? Who are people worried about there if it’s not the Russia threat that we feel here in the north?

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Jana said that she’s not the prime minister and she’s not official, so she can be candid. I’m not sure she meant that we were not candid.

Teri Schultz: That is what you make of it.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: But I want to say that when Trump was elected, he said that God had a plan and wanted to bring him back to the White House to save the United States. And it was then that I added that he said only half of the truth because God planned that by electing Trump, God wanted to wake Europe up, right?

So I don’t understand really when Europeans consume time talking about what Trump said, what Trump said, what Trump said. I believe more, the American friends when they say to take President Trump seriously but not literally. So the serious part of that is that President Trump made Europe see itself in all its weakness, right? So as speaking as the Prime Minister of Albania, a country that is seeking to get in the European Union and now a veteran among the leaders, I must say, I’ve heard so many times: ‘We want you in Europe’, but it never happened to make a step and we needed Vladimir Putin, to wake them up and to say, hey, the geopolitical thing is real. The geopolitical threat is real. It’s not just some theoretical thing.

So on one hand, Putin helped Europe wake up and accelerate the process for us and in general. On the other hand, Trump helped Europe realise that it has to get its act together.

Now, what I see as a problem is the total disconnection in our discussions between what we have to do militarily and what we have to do on all the rest. But this is connected. And I am very, very afraid that, if this old defence expansion remains in this abstract percentage, you know, we have to increase 3%, 4%, 5%, and it’s not tied to, number one, industrial productivity and competitiveness in Europe. And then, number two, procurement integration, which is another big problem. And then innovation overall, plus democratic legitimacy for Europe, not just for the elected governments, then it’s very possible that Europe will have more weapons, but will be weaker.

So the political dimension is so important because, on the other hand, it’s also an option that all this security anxiety can revive Europe, the dark forces that have been in Europe for a long. And this is where we have to become very serious because if rearmament and all this spending will occur alongside recession, inequality, migration panic, identity conflict, declining trust in the mainstream political parties, then Europe could witness in the meantime a much stronger far-right ethno-nationalism, and then neo-fascism can appear in its real true colours. So I want to say that Europe’s challenge is not merely just how to arm, how to have more soldiers, how to have more weapons, how to go up and up in spending, but it is to ensure that rearmament does not become a vessel for democratic destabilisation. And this can be a real thing if we want to learn from history, because Europe has a history and history has shown us very much what we have to try and avoid.

So we have kind of admired, and we have kind of adored Europe and the European Union as a great force for peace and for security. And we have always thought, wrongly so, that all the blood, all the conflict, all the ghosts and the dark forces are in the past. But suddenly, we face a big strategic dilemma. And it’s not enough to identify where the problems are. The big problem is how these problems are addressed when it comes to the competitive side, when it comes to energy security. We live in a continent, as I said before, that is very strong when you mathematically bring together the GDP, but that is horribly weak when you see how the energy market is so fragmented and how energy costs far less in one point and far more in another point.

So I think it can be a big trap if defence becomes self-consuming, and it can paradoxically make the feeling of anxiety, the feeling of insecurity, the feeling of being under some attack, and the feeling of having to deal with aggression in the coming years. And so we have to expand militarisation, a trap to radicalise politics and to make strategic restraint more and more impossible.

On one hand, we have the high-risk path, which is fragmented military expansion. It’s fragmented, let’s face it. Debt without productivity, social decline, and then, of course, nationalist opportunism that is always there, ready to take over.

So if we want to take the low-risk path of rearmament, because let’s not forget, until some time ago, everyone was very, very enthusiastic about disarmament. Now we have excitement about rearmament. So, integrated defence, modernisation, industrial renewal, technological innovation, social investment, and democratic resilience are the things that can somehow balance.

Otherwise, then you’ll be in a position to be asked to show before the questions, and for the committee to approve before you moderate.

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Jana Puglieri: Security is the basis for everything. And that means that we need to invest.

And I think it’s not about militarisation, and it’s not about a spending spree, because when you look at the history of the 3.5 per cent goal, this is basically, if you think about the NATO regional plans and what needs to be done to deter NATO, this is basically capability-based.

This is not a number out of the blue because we all of a sudden thought, “Oh, it would be great to spend so much on defense,” but it’s kind of real needs that need to be fulfilled, based on NATO capability targets.

But of course, you are right. It’s not about spending more. It’s also about spending better, more collectively, procuring together, reducing the number of weapon systems and all of this. But I think it is not about the militarisation of Europe, as I see it.

 Prime Minister Edi Rama: No,  sorry, but to make sure that I’m not taken out of context, I never said that we should not rearm and we should just make party at the border with Russia.

I said simply that the challenge for Europe is not whether it rearms.

This is out of question. It is whether, in rearming, it will preserve the economic vitality, it will preserve the democratic legitimacy, it will preserve the social cohesion, and it will become what it should become in a world where the competitive global powers are emerging very strongly while Europe is lagging.

And the last thing is what distinguish militarized. I lived in a militarised country with something else, that is the Europe we want. It’s not the fact how much armed both are, but is what distinguishes a durable civilisation from one that is gradually consumed by the costs of defending itself. The second one is the Soviet Union and others. And the first one I wish is Europe. So this is just to make it very clear, because you asked the citizens about rearming, but please ask them about health care, ask them about prices of energy, and ask them about making startups in Germany.Ask them about this, this, and then they’ll say yes, we want this, we want this, we want that. The problem is how to do both.

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My question is for all European representatives. Is it time to change your laws and allow Europeans to go defend Ukraine?

Thank you so much. I really like how Edi Rama has tried to de-silo the discussion a little bit. And by talking about Mario Draghi, you know, in a way, and if you just sort of suspend, you know, the frames we’ve had on the United States for a minute, to some degree, President Trump, in looking at the national security dimensions of the economic performance in the United States beginning, is trying to synthesize these different features a lot more.

And that’s what I sort of felt you were trying to do with the Mario Draghi discussion and saying how core it is. If you go to some uncomfortable places—”

If you go to China, something like this, there’s a synthesis there. So I just wanted to sort of raise this question about how you see this conversation in Europe. Is it still a boutique conversation with Mario Draghi, or is it much bigger outside this room?

Prime Minister Edi Rama: I think that instead of finishing the time with questions, I have to answer. But quickly. At the end of this conversation, what we had, we are here to speak about, or we try to speak about, how Europe should build up its defence and be self-sufficient, which everybody from at least the European side said.

But when it comes to what is in the background, the easiest thing is to hit the United States and to hit Trump. While our problem is not Trump, it is not the United States, it is not if they go around or they come around, because it is what it is, as Trump would say.

But our problem is how Europe will become a force that will sustain this ramp up of its own military capability while becoming in the same time the place that we all adored when we were behind the wall. So becoming the place of competitiveness, becoming the place of a real single market, becoming the place of a not fragmented energy market, becoming the place where AI is not just regulated, but it’s also created. And sorry, but becoming the place where we should not forget that what made Europe, Europe was not the fact that Europe could go to war, but was also the fact that Europe was the most incredible soft power in the world. Diplomacy is also something we should do.

I have to let other people answer. So Europe should talk to Vladimir Vladimirovich and not simply talk about Trump. And talking to Vladimir Vladimirovich is not easy, I know. It doesn’t mean not to support Ukraine. It means to support Ukraine all the way, but also to understand that to honour Europe and European culture and history, we have to play it differently. And that’s why I want to answer the man. Yes, ISIS recruited more people, but Europe cannot support copycat ISIS because we should aim for something totally different, and this is the thing we are avoiding all the time. The gentleman there says Spain—listen, Pedro Sanchez made a very good argument. He doesn’t need me to advocate for him, but he made a very good argument that it’s not about how much percent, it’s about capabilities, and it’s about how we make capabilities that are European defence, not just Estonian defence or Albanian defence or British defence, but European defence. And we are so far from it that we are all the time trying to get the answers on how Trump will become less passionate to confuse us. This will not happen.

Prime Minister of Estonia Kristen Michal: But I will correct my friend Edi, because he’s very, very passionate. But I would say the first thing I agree on that the problem is Putin. That is a problem. That is a real problem. And the problem is European weakness. Europe was a project of peace without arms. Now it’s becoming a project of peace with arms. That is a much-needed change. That is the first thing with the industry and everything. But Europe should not ask for European security from Putin. This is not the right way. This is not the right way.

 Prime Minister Edi Rama: Why do you applaud? This is obvious. I didn’t say that. Sorry, but Israel and Hamas choked each other to death, and they talked all the time. What does it mean? And don’t forget, I come from a country where, since 1960, no one went to Moscow, and no one came from Moscow. So I’m far from being someone who would like to meet Vladimir Vladimirovich. But, someone should, you know? Otherwise, what do we do? We prepare what? Russia is there; it’s not going to go anywhere else. So while we do everything that was rightly said, diplomacy is a must. But sorry, why then did eight leaders go to Trump in front of him around the chair, and they ask him, “What did you talk to Vladimir about, what Vladimir said to you?” Go direct!