Following is the interview with CDS in full:

CDS: Mr. Prime Minister, didn’t you change your mind after protesting to Rai over the episode of the Report broadcast on the Italy-Albania pact?

Rama: Unfortunately, I can’t delete that word. Not even artificial intelligence can find another one that better describes that broadcast. However, I would like to clarify that I did not protest.

CDS: You called Corsini.

Rama: I communicated to the public service a very serious fact, concerning which it would not have been informed otherwise.

CDS: Does it seem right and normal to you that the prime minister of another country, no matter how friendly, puts pressure on state TV? The parties that oppose the Meloni government cried foul.

Rama: Before blaming the type of my speech and crying foul, my dear friends in the opposition in Italy should take an interest in the causes and try to understand that dignity and transparency are important both when talking about the Italian public service and when it comes to Albanian public institutions and the people who represent them. I have neither the means nor the intention to impose anything on the home affairs of your country. However, I have the duty to protect my country from the horrible stereotype of another era, created by the media in Italy about Albania and the Albanians.”

SDC: Isn’t it true that work on the migrant detention centers is falling behind schedule? And that the 650 million expenses expected in five years have risen to a billion?

Rama : What is the relevance of all the controversies in your country about flows, costs, contracts and so on to us? No relevance at all. And what does the fact that the secretary general of the Albanian government was a criminal lawyer in Italy more than ten years ago have to do with the pact on migrants? And for what incomprehensible reason did lies have to be told and slander exported from Albania to Italy, to be thrown like stones at the witches in the eyes of Report’s audience?”.

SDC : Is the former criminal lawyer Enjell Agaci, who once defended Albanian mafiosi and drug traffickers and who is now secretary general of his government, the key man behind the protocol or not?
Rama: There was unreasonable fury against Agaci, beyond the damage and the smear campaign. After having censored the question requested by the program from the secretary general and accepted by him, after he responded via email, yet again they continued to accuse him of having refused to respond. It was a bitter pill to be swallowed in silence.”

Is it for a form of compensation that you asked the host of Report, Sigfrido Ranucci, to be able to reply with a live interview?

Rama: I didn’t ask for any compensation. On Thursday I exchanged a friendly message with the host Ranucci, after having published on X my reaction to an interview by him on an Albanian TV. Maybe I will finally be able to assert our reasons in his broadcast, without being censored.”

CDS: By the way, what do you think about Rai censorship in Scurati?
Rama: I don’t know the details of the matter.

CDS: However, you should know the details of the agreement on the deportation of migrants signed with Meloni. Will it cost a lot of money and solve nothing? Even you, PM, admitted to having doubts…
Rama: “If you have no doubts while trying to open new pages of any kind, then you live one step away from failure, that’s all.

CDS: The opposition accuses Meloni of replicating the Orban model, on the issue of civil rights and freedom of information and the press. Are they wrong, or is there really anything to worry about?

Rama: How can I say who is right and who is wrong, if after having intervened in a civil manner on a very serious matter of censorship and gratuitous disinformation affecting Albania I found myself in the midst of the Italian storm, where political war is cruel?

CDS: You assured us that you had not called your friend, your prime minister, before calling director Corsini. And afterwards, did you talk to Meloni? And what did you say to each other?
Rama: I haven’t spoken to Giorgia Meloni, because mine is a battle for the truth and dignity of Albania and the Albanians. Your prime minister has nothing to do with it, although my country was dragged into this as a collateral target of the assault against her government.”

/ a.jor./sm/