In his remarks on the panel alongside Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, Rama said that “we are a European country and this is not settled in Brussels, that is for sure”.

“I have a slightly different view than Alexander’s as to the biggest enlargement promoter in the last two years, it has not been President Macron of France but Vladimir Putin. This comes down to tragic optimism unfortunately because Europe needed Valdimir Putin to attack Ukraine so as not to take it as given that the Western Balkans is there and suffice it to say; Listen up one day the blue horizon will be all yours, but right now we need to fix some other things, it’s all merit-based. Is it really merit-based, I’m not sure about it. Western Balkans is here, its integration is not enlargement, it’s a union,” Rama said.

“When it comes to Albania, we are Europeans, we are stubbornly in love with Europe. We will not take no for an answer, we will be with the EU until the end, as we were with Stalin. We will be with the EU even when the EU no longer exists. We will invite everyone to start over from Albania and build another EU,” Rama said.

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