Following is the full text of the speech delivered by Prime Minister Edi Rama at the hearing session organized by the Friends of Albania Group at the European Parliament in Brussels:
Thank you! I can go on in Italian, but we are here to integrate into Europe since we are already integrated into Italy. I would like to thank the President and our dear friend and very esteemed chief of the EU diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, and certainly Mr. Sassoli for this very generous initiative to bring together all of you in the name of friendship with Albania at a very crucial moment for us, on the eve of the European Commission’s report and the European Council that will follow.
We think we fully deserve the opening of the accession talks. I’m sure that for many people in this room, who have knowledge about our country’s history and about all the efforts that have been made by the country over the past years, it is not difficult to understand why it is so important to enter this new phase. But maybe, for others is also important to know how many efforts, as well as how many difficulties we have gone through to arrive to this moment.
I would take from the President’s speech what sometimes we take for granted, or it’s taken for granted that has to do with the actual situation in the Balkans, where since 2014, we have a very important and fundamental change, in terms of the common will to work together for a better future, to cooperate and take whole region to another level of mutual understanding and mutual respect. At the same time, as the President very well stated, it is a region where not without deep reasons we have gone through conflicts and wars in the region, where we have a very complex structure of ethnicities and religions.
Today, it is a region fully devoted to the European project, but also an area where other actors look for potential interferences with a very clear geostrategic vision. So, we should not and nobody here in this building and in this city, should not forget that what has been achieved is a big achievement, but it is also important to be protected and consolidated in order to make sure that the future will not bring back to us the ghosts of the past.
Today, everyone is talking to everyone in the region and what only few years ago was difficult to be imagined, is the everyday life for the region. But not because we are better than our fathers, or our grandfathers, but because nowadays we live in an area where there is a common key word that has the strength to bring us together.
Europe is a religion in our region. It puts together everyone regardless the ethnicity and religion.
We may look naïve in a moment when Europe is being questioned in many big European countries. We may look impatient, but we are neither naïve, nor impatient. We simply know what war does mean, which is not the case for many Europeans who haven’t seen a war and sometimes forget this is first and foremost because of the European Union.
We came from a long way also as a country. If we look at the pace of integration, it is very clear that those who reached Europe first, had easier time to reconnect with their own past, to reconnect with a past when they had built a state, they had institutions, academia, religious networks and so on and so forth.
For us, it has not been so easy, because our past was not at all generous and the state-building process for all countries in the region, I’m talking now about Albania, is a new process. It’s not something that has happened before.
Of course, we had a state before. We had a communist state and prior to the communist state we had some years of Fascist and Nazi occupation. Before it, we had 500 years of Ottoman Empire. So, building institutions, building a functioning state and building a functioning democracy is a very new exercise.
The European Union integration, with all its benchmarks, key priorities and all the rest, is a unique tool that has no alternative. In that respect, the process is absolutely as important if even not more important than the membership itself, because it’s a process that keeps everyone together for a common purpose.
In Albania, we had the most brutal communist dictatorship, but, guess what; we hadn’t a communist party following the fall of communism. At the same time, we never had so far a populist party that would claim for another version, another alternative or another way than the European Union. So, everyone can agree that this is our destination and everyone is ready sacrifice and support very painful reforms.
I’m telling you one detail, which shows a lot. We changed our Constitution and, guess what, we have the only Constitution on earth, where an International Monitoring Operation is a constitutional power to make sure that our justice reform is real and what the President mentioned the vetting process of every judge and every prosecutor is also real.
Why we did it? We did it because we strongly believe that, first of all we need it for the future generations a justice system that is real, fair and just and functional and because also we desperately want the European integration process to move forward and to finally happen.
So, judges and prosecutors from Europe and America are together as part of this International Monitoring Operation, which is safeguarding the whole process of vetting every judge and every prosecutor in the country, after having changed the Constitution in order to build a new justice system. And I’m sure they can tell how serious we are on that and how deep this reform is. By the way, today 17 heavyweights of the old justice system have pulled back and didn’t go through the vetting process. Therefore, somehow they were self-excluded, starting from the General Prosecutor and Constitutional and Supreme Court judges, which is an immense change.
I want everyone to remember that the vetting process was the only assumption made in the positive recommendation of the Commission in 2016, which said: “We recommend opening of the negotiations with the assumption that the vetting process will go on.” The vetting process is going on and this week the process of public hearings with every judge and prosecutor will start. So, every judge will have to through this trial, in two instances, the first instance and then to the appellate, to respond about the integrity of the decision-making in the past and about the legitimacy of his or her wealth.
By having always supported the integration of every country and having applauded the process of negotiations underway for Serbia and Montenegro, I have to make a remark. In the new enlargement strategy launched by the Commission, Serbia and Montenegro are supposed to start with an action plan, which will address the justice reform, meaning they have to go through the Albanian model, although they are negotiating, whereas we are not yet starting the negotiations.
I know this process has two sides, the technical and the political side. However, I think Albania doesn’t deserve to be subject of inner problems of one country or another, of inner dynamics and I strongly believe that populists or anti-European forces won’t become weaker, if Albania will not open the negotiations.
I don’t think it is a good excuse to say we have some populists, we have some anti-Europeans, thus some people who are disenchanted with Europe and therefore we have to be careful so Albania may not open right away the negotiations. If this would help to combat populism, then we can make the sacrifice and say: “Ok, we don’t open the negotiations, but please get rid of them.” But I don’t think it will work like this. Nothing would change.
Making countries like ours, which are so much devoted to the European Union, suffer or pay a cost that is totally not part of our burden of responsibility, is in my view totally not European.
Of course we know every country that has made, may be not every country, but since Bulgaria and Romania, which were in the second wave, I don’t know the others, stood for entering, those countries had to go through a special label. When Bulgarians wanted to do what we are trying to do now, they were labelled like a country that wanted to kill the Pope. And it was everywhere. Romanians were labelled as the country that all it was doing was to provide prostitutes to Europe. The Montenegrins were labelled like smugglers and now with Albania there is something really offensive, the Albanian ethnic crime. Here and there, in different cities.
First of all, I don’t think that this pays any credit to the reality. And secondly, with all due respect, I don’t think that saying that Albanians are overtaking the kingdom of criminality in Europe is serious. It is ridiculous.
We have problems with the organized crime, but nothing special. We have to make this fight like all the countries that went through it. And of course we are not coming here and say: “We want to become members.” We are not ready to become members. We know that. We have problems with corruption, we have problems with the organized crime, we have problems with the institutions building and that’s why we want to start negotiations and enter a new phase, which would give a lot more leverage to the Commission itself and which will be a much bigger responsibility for all of us.
We had to face the problem of cannabis. Cannabis didn’t grow in the country for the first time in the last years, because this is an old story and an old disease. We decided to fight it. And I’m very happy that, not us, but the Italian Guardia di Finanza published the report that we have eradicated cannabis for good in 2017 together with them, who are very precious partners, with other Italian agencies, police and others, and also with other international agencies.
So, I want to conclude by saying Albania is not asking for any gift, is not asking for any favour it doesn’t deserve. We are simply asking to open accession talks, because we deserve it. We have done one by one everything that is written in Albania’s homework book. We have done it by the book. For sure, we haven’t done it because Brussels is asking us to do. We used to do things like that when Moscow and Beijing asked us in the past. But this time, we do it because it is good for our country, is good for the future generations. And at the same time, we also do it because we want to get acknowledgement from Brussels and the green light from the member states to start the accession talks. That’s why we are here.
Of course, somehow we are preaching the converted here, but I very strongly believe that with the help of everyone in this room and the friends of Albania we can make it happen and make sure that everyone who is more sceptical understand that opening the negotiations with Albania is not creating a new potential problem, but it’s simply the opening of a process for making Europe stronger. Balkans needs Europe desperately, but Europe needs the Balkans strategically. Either we will be Europe, or, as the President said, others will be a disturbance for Europe itself.
Thank you!
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The European Parliament’s Friends of Albania group hosted a hearing session on Albania’s progress in addressing the key integration priorities in Brussels. Addressing the event, also attended by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said: “2017 was a big year and 2018 must be the year of speeding up of Albania’s integration process.” He praised the country’s reform efforts to address the key EU integration priorities and the justice system reform in particular.
“The rule of law has to be a priority and let me highlight the commitment of the Albanian government on justice reform. It’s principle we very much hold dear even within the boundaries of the EU, to ensure a stronger tie and more democratic coexistence.”
EP President Tajani also highly praised the commitment of the government on the fight against organized crime. “We are faced with the same challenges. The security of Europe is tied with the security of Albania. The action plan against the organized crime, which Prime Minister Rama has put in place, it is very important. I do appreciate the collaboration with the Italian Guardia di Finanza against drug trafficking.”
A Europe without participation of Albania is inconceivable to us, Tajani stated, as he praised the religious cohabitation in Albania as a beautiful and valuable message. “Albania’s model of cohabitation and dialogue, where there is no problem of being part of different religions and where Christians and Muslims get along, where mosques stand next to churches. This is a beautiful message.”
To the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, the EU integration process of Albania and the entire Western Balkans is a process of mutual benefit and interest. “It is not a favour we make, it is a matter of self-interest for the European Union itself.”
From the very beginning, Mogherini made it clear she prefers the word “enlargement” to be replaced with the word “reunification”. “I do not like the word enlargement because it assumes that there is a centre that gets bigger – I think it is a matter of re-uniting our continent… I see in Albania – because now we are talking about that – in these years a determination, a dedication, a feeling of being European.” On the path towards reunification, Albania – Mogherini noted – has achieved incredible things.
“I have seen Albania incredible things. The Justice Reform, we have accompanied it locally, here in Brussels day by day. It is true: we have worked on this together and we have achieved the results, you have achieved results, I believe, because we have been working on this together, as well as on other things. The fields where reforms were done are huge and many, but I stick to these two elements: the Foreign and Security Policy and the work you have done on the Justice Reform. The vetting process is entering a phase that is already producing results. The war against organised crime – that by the way is a war that many other countries, including some Member States, are doing at different stages – you know it is a process.”
Taking notice of what has been achieved on this journey, Mogherini emphasized it is time to move forward. “The choice we have in front of us now, as institutions, is clear: that of not losing the result of years of common work. I believe – in any case this is my political objective in these three, four months to come, to be very concrete – first, to have an unconditional positive recommendation by the European Commission on Albania – not only on Albania but here we talk about that – and, second, to have the Council deciding in June to open the negotiation talks. And then we start dialogue.
The Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ditmir Bushati, focused on the transformation impact this process has on the Western Balkans societies. “For the first time after the Thessaloniki Agenda, we welcome the fact that a enlargement strategy to the Western Balkans is in place as a transforming process of the Western Balkans.”
