TIRANA, April 3 – In an interview with France24 television, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama urged Macedonia to respect the Ohrid Agreement and pointed out that Albanians are not a minority.
“In Macedonia there is an Albanian ethnicity that constitutes more than 35 percent of the population,” Rama said.
The statement comes after Macedonian officials have repeatedly accused Albanian Prime Minister of meddling with the country’s affairs and launching the so called “Tirana platform” a list of political demands put forward by ethnic Albanian parties in the country.
In addition, Prime Minister Rama urged European Union to not consider Balkans as the powder keg for the continent and underlined that the Union must not feel exhausted with new memberships.
“For Balkans there is no other alternative but the EU membership,” he said.
During the interview, Rama also focused on political situation in Albania, saying that the implementation of the crucial justice reform aimed at uprooting corruption is “at a critical point.”
“The justice reform has been launched in collaboration with EU and U.S. The government has made constitutional amendments required for an independent justice sector, but the vetting process for judges and prosecutors has become hard to swallow for some people,” Rama said.
He responded to claims by the opposition parties that the Socialist-led government is headed towards capturing the justice system and said that the country’s strategic partners “would have never consented justice tampering.”
Albania’s Democratic Party has accused Rama’s government of corruption and has warned to boycott the parliamentary elections scheduled for June 18.
