TIRANA, July 1 /ATA/ Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the European innovation and entrepreneurship forum Ruhr Summit today, where he presented the Albanian government’s vision for using artificial intelligence to modernize the public administration and accelerate the country’s European integration process.
In his remarks, Rama said that artificial intelligence enhances the state’s capacity not by expanding the size of the public administration, but by making it smarter and more efficient.
“With artificial intelligence, capacity does not grow simply by expanding—it grows by becoming smarter. This is not science fiction; it is becoming an administrative reality, and perhaps nowhere is this transformation more impactful than in our country’s defining project: membership in the European Union,” Edi Rama said.
The prime minister noted that the process of joining the European Union is not merely a political negotiation, but also an extraordinarily complex administrative undertaking.
“For those observing from afar, accession appears to be a political negotiation. It is, but everyone who has gone through the process understands that it is also the most demanding administrative process humanity has ever created. It involves 33 chapters and three sets of criteria, more than 100,000 pages of European legislation and regulations, thousands of directives, thousands of additional regulations, thousands of court rulings, and countless implementation reports that must be incorporated into our legal framework,” Rama said.
Rama also addressed the challenges that have traditionally accompanied the accession process, noting that for decades countries have mobilized substantial human and financial resources to align their legislation with the EU acquis.
He said Albania has chosen a new approach by partnering with OpenAI to develop an artificial intelligence model that will help support this process.
“When OpenAI was launched, we were fortunate that one of its creators was an Albanian. I immediately called her and said that perhaps she could help Albania move closer to the European Union, and do so more quickly. Together with OpenAI, we developed a model that sets us apart from every other country by turning artificial intelligence into a tool for transferring the EU acquis in a very short time, with the highest quality, and for incorporating it into our legal framework,” the prime minister said.
Rama clarified that artificial intelligence will neither make political decisions nor replace Albania’s negotiators.
“Artificial intelligence will not negotiate with Brussels, nor should it. Political judgment belongs to elected governments, democratic legitimacy belongs to citizens, and trust between nations can never be generated by an algorithm,” Edi Rama said.
According to the prime minister, the role of artificial intelligence is to reduce the administrative burden and strengthen institutional capacity.
“Artificial intelligence can eliminate friction, shorten administrative timelines, and multiply institutional capacity. For a country like Albania, this is not merely a technological innovation but a strategic accelerator. The standards remain exactly the same, but the speed and quality change,” Edi Rama said.
The prime minister said developments in artificial intelligence could transform the way candidate countries prepare for membership in the European Union.
“Perhaps for the first time in European history, the success of a candidate country will depend less on the size of its bureaucracy than on the intelligence of its institutions,” Rama concluded.
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