In Brussels, Rama also met with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic to discuss joint infrastructure projects
BRUSSELS, April 21 – Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has urged the European Union not to delay the integration of the six Balkan countries that still remain outside the bloc.
Rama made the comments during an EU-held summit on the Western Balkans, which followed up on a Berlin meeting last year, urging the countries of the region to offer joint projects in their EU integration path.
During the summit, Rama met with all regional leaders and top EU officials and said that the integration of Albania and other Western Balkan countries in the EU is the best instrument of the modernization of societies in the region.
Rama has always stressed during the year and a half he has been in the post that it is wrong for the EU to delay the integration of these countries — a move he sees stemming from electoral political tactics in the EU member countries.
Rama has been vocal in criticizing the fear some EU member countries have from enlargement, saying that the answer to problems in Europe “is more Europe and not less Europe.”
The failure to quickly include the whole Balkans in the bloc not only weakens the perspective of regional but Europe too, he added.
“It’s easy to imagine a perspective of the young men and women in Albania, in Kosovo, or wherever they are, as part of a European society and of a country which sooner or later will be part of the EU,” he said.
Rama also said that daily politics have constantly weakened the EU “taking advantage of what in my point of view are not weaknesses of the big project of the EU’s founding fathers, but weaknesses that emanate from the failure to fulfill the project.”
Rama insisted that Europe must not forget that the Balkan countries, though they are not part of the EU yet, they are and must be seen as an integral part of Europe.
While in Brussels, Rama also met with his Serb counterpart Aleksandar Vucic to discuss joint infrastructure projects.
Vucic pointed out that Serbia will insist on financial support for the construction of the Belgrade-Podgorica-Shkodra railway as well as the Nis-Prishtina-Durres highway.
Rama said the Albanian side was ready to start work on these projects, and that it would be a good sign of partnership relations between Serbia and Albania.
“As once the French and the Germans began to work together for the future of Europe, so can we for the future of the Western Balkans,” Rama said.
Vucic is expected to visit Tirana in May.
