TIRANA, September 1 /ATA/ Prime Minister Edi Rama stated today in Belgrade that the “Open Balkans” is much more than economy, trade and politics; it is a project of peace and peaceful coexistence, a project of peaceful unification of a common vision for the future that this small neighborhood in the middle of Europe not to suffer from shadows of the past, but to become more and more the country of the future for all our youth.
PM Rama participated in the opening ceremony of the first edition of the Wine Fair in Belgrade, organized as part of the “Open Balkans” initiative, where for the first time producers come together to promote the region’s wines, alongside world-renowned producers.
Rama said that “Open Balkan Wine Vision” will take place every year from one capital to another, turning step by step into an important economic and tourist instrument.
“I will speak here in my strange language, because I do not know your strange language. Before I came here, I was looking at the speech that my team had prepared for me and I decided not to use it, because it started with the expression: ‘We in Albania have created the first wine in the Balkans since the Bronze Age,’ said Rama.
“I don’t know how true that is, but I do know that we’ve wasted a lot of time trying to tell each other who was the first, who’s the oldest, who got it right first to live in this country, while we have all learned one thing, that none of us will go anywhere else. All our countries are here to stay for many, many years and centuries after us”, continued the prime minister.
Rama said that, “Our choice is very simple, how to stay here in this country, being all together in the same neighborhood of Europe, trying to make this neighborhood more joyful, more livable, more peaceful for all our people, or by throwing stones on each other’s tiles and setting each other on fire, as we have done for many years and centuries”.
“I know that a lot of work has been done to come to the day of this ceremony. I know it is not easy to bring these great wine producers to the Balkans for the first time. The fact that they have come should encourage us even more and make us all even more convinced that the ‘open Balkan’ is much more than economics, trade and politics. ‘The Open Balkans’ is a project of peace and peaceful coexistence, a project of peaceful unification of a common vision for the future so that this small neighborhood in the middle of Europe no longer suffers from the shadows of the past, but always becomes more the country of the future for all our youth”, said Rama.
The prime minister expressed his belief that, “Even here at this high-level European fair, it is clear that it is better together like this, bringing people closer, getting closer to people, seeing how many things we have in common as people, than as we have previously stood with their backs to each other, without knowing about each other at all and with many conflicts and wars in between”.
“Today, by visiting this fair, where in addition to producers from Albania, Serbia and North Macedonia there are also producers from many other countries famous for wine production, we have given our producers the opportunity not only to cooperate to increase expanded their market, but we have also given opportunities to wine merchants outside this region to see so many products in a common space, that it would take a long time to see them”, said Rama./r.e/p.s./
