The Embassy of France in Tirana has issued today a note of protest to the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania against Prime Minister Rama. The Embassy considers as “inadequate” Rama’s criticism against the EU for their lack of support towards the Western Balkans in the vaccination process, and even regards as “untrue” the claims made by Rama regarding the existence of stock vaccines that can’t be used by France.
The Embassy reminded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the EU donates each year a significant amount of money to Albania: “We want to remind that every year, the European Union is the biggest donator in Albania, with more than 100 million euro, in various sectors. Regarding the pandemic, the European Commission informed on the 8th of January, that the global portfolio of the EU with 2.3 billion doses wasn’t available only to the EU countries, but also to the neighboring ones,” said the Embassy, adding that for the Western Balkans countries there’s a fund available of 70 million euros as part of the IPA program.
The note of protest continued by saying that “while France will reach its goal to vaccinate 1 million people until the end of January, the Prime Minister raised the question why France should have a stock of vaccines that cannot use, while it can share them with the others. Beside the untruth nature of this information […] this Embassy considers that it is quite inadequate to attack in such a nominative way, a country which is an ally and a friend.”
In an interview for Top Channel two days ago, Rama repeated his criticism against the EU, for not providing vaccines for Albania and the Western Balkans. During the interview, Rama mentioned also the case of France, by saying that “France has much more vaccines than those it has used so far […] what’s the point of having in stock vaccines that you cannot inject in one day, or even in a week or two, while you can say to the 6 countries that are outside the EU that you can take some of them, not too much, just two thousand, three thousand, 5 thousand, so you can start injecting the vaccine to those that are in the frontline and are working 24 hours a day,” said Rama. “What could it cost them? Nothing,” said the Prime Minister.
