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On Wednesday, November 8, the European Commission released a report recommending accelerating the enlargement of the Twenty-Seven. This is of particular interest to our guest, Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, a country officially a candidate for entry into the EU since 2014, and which has started accession negotiations in 2022. At the head of the government for ten years , he recently signed a migration agreement with the President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni, which has caused a lot of discussion.
On November 7, the social democrat Edi Rama signed a migration agreement with the very right-wing Giorgia Meloni, president of the Italian Council, which plans to send migrants rescued in the Mediterranean by the Italian navy to reception centers in Albania. In Brussels, there are concerns about respect for international law and human rights, even though Albania is not a member of the European Union (EU) and the centers will be under Italian jurisdiction.
According to the Albanian Prime Minister, “If the same agreement had been made with an EU country, no one would talk about it. The fact that it is done with a country that is not in the EU not only makes people talk , but also triggers conspiracy theories and doubts which, in my opinion, are really not serious. (…). If we want to question the method, we must question it in all European countries, because these centers do not are not new. This is a center which meets the standards of all EU countries (…). Perhaps reception centers of this nature are not the real solution. But it is not up to Albania to give lessons to Europe. We are providing a little help to a country which is not only a neighbor, but with which we have been very deeply linked for a very long time “, he says.
As for the Albanians’ fears of seeing the tourist sector affected by the presence of this reception center, Edi Rama wants to be reassuring: “It is a reception center with 3,000 places. That means that it There will be 3,000 people per rotation in Albania, and not one more (..). This is not what will shake up the Albanian tourism industry!”
For some NGOs, this is an illegal protocol that could have devastating consequences for asylum seekers, who would be subject to prolonged detention and other violations of their rights, and allow trafficking to flourish. Human being. “I find all this really difficult to understand (…). We are a responsible European country, like those of the EU. We want to make a modest contribution (…) and that becomes a reason to start again with the old litany of mafiosi and human rights traffickers!”, protests Edi Rama.
Accession slowed down by Greece
The Albanian Prime Minister welcomes the latest report from the European Commission on the enlargement of the EU, which according to him is “generally very positive. It marks quite objectively all the progress that we have made and, of course, it also marks everything that we must continue to do, because we are not yet at the end of the road.”
As for the decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine, a country at war, he considers it “a very strong geopolitical decision. Proof of the fact that the EU has been trying for some time to become more geopolitical and less technocratic.” But Edi Rama also expresses a certain concern: “The new conflict in the Middle East has not really helped. There is also a sort of general fatigue in European and American public opinions with regard to this war where there is You really have to stay the course.”
As for Albania’s accession process, it is being slowed down by Greece, which is blocking the opening of the country’s first five accession chapters, due to a legal affair with the mayor of the Albanian seaside resort of Albania. Himara, from the Greek minority. Edi Rama wants to be optimistic: “I don’t believe that this blockage will continue, because it really wouldn’t be very serious. It’s clearly a question of justice. And we have made progress on the judicial side (…). We “We have a strategic relationship with Athens, and I don’t think this subject will upset it.”
European growth plan for the Balkans
The World Bank predicts a growth rate of 3.6% for Albania in 2023, and the European Commission proposes a growth plan of 6 billion euros for the Balkans, with means greater than the funds usually released under the framework of the pre-accession of candidate countries. Edi Rama says he is “satisfied with the fact that the Albanian economy is considered by international financial institutions as a particularly resilient economy. At the time of the energy price crisis, our inflation was the lowest in the region”, notes -he. But Albania is counting on the EU’s growth plan, which “will be very important, not only for Albania, but for the whole region.”
Europeans are increasingly convinced of the geopolitical interest of integrating the Balkan countries, but certain important problems persist between some of them, such as Kosovo and Serbia. For Edi Rama, this is “one more reason to integrate them into the EU. Geopolitically, it would be suicidal for the Union to exclude the region, to exclude certain countries (…). This is the only way to achieve final peace in the Balkans.” He recognizes that there are sometimes problems between certain countries, but “the general framework of the region is much better than ten years ago, (…) and it is because there is this attraction of the EU in all countries”.
Program prepared by Sophie Samaille, Isabelle Romero, Juliette Laurain and Perrine Desplats