The College of Europe in Tirana officially opened the 2025–2026 academic year today, marking the institution’s second year in the Albanian capital, with growing interest from students across the region and EU member states.

Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the ceremony, which was opened by Federica Mogherini, Rector of the College of Europe in Tirana.

Speaking about the institution’s progress, she presented figures illustrating this year’s student body: 41 students are enrolled, selected after a long and competitive process involving 196 applicants and numerous interviews. Of the students, 52% are women and 48% men, representing 24 different nationalities. One quarter comes from the region, while the rest are from EU member states, with an average age of 26.

“We still don’t have the new and beautiful campus ready, but thanks to you, we already have a point on the horizon between what Europe is and what Europe still needs to become,” Prime Minister Rama said in his remarks to the students and faculty present.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama:

Welcome to Tirana, and thank you for welcoming me to the College of Europe. We don’t have the new, beautiful campus for you yet, but thanks to you, we have here a frontier between what Europe is and what Europe must still become.

This is the second year that young Europeans gather here in Albania to learn how Europe thinks, how Europe argues, and how Europe transforms itself, and I cannot imagine a more symbolic location with all due respect for Bruges and Natolin, we worry for them, your friends in Bruges and Natolin who have to live under a grey sky all the time, we made sure that today you have a grey sky too, as a sign of solidarity with them.

Albania is a very rare place in today’s Europe where the European dream is still fresh, urgent, functional, not taken for granted, not yet bureaucratized, not reduced to a dull background noise of everyday. A country where, as I already told my fellow leaders gathered today from the neighbourhood for the summit on the new growth plan, faith in Europe runs so high that even an old EU veteran like Eurobarometer can’t help but blush like a teenager in love.

Europe is not a geography, it’s a choice. Europe is not a place, it’s a decision. A decision to prefer cooperation to confrontation, law to force, dialogue to shouting. And I must add truth to stereotypes.

Let me give you a small but, I believe, revealing example. Two days ago, the UK Home Secretary publicly cited around 100 Albanian families living in taxpayer-funded accommodation after failed asylum claims to justify a new wave of family returns. 700 families.

In a country of 67 million people, a statistical whisper inflated into a political siren. Now, why do I bring this up here at the College of Europe in Tirana? Not to complain, not to dramatise, and let alone to confuse the EU with its bitter divorcee. But because this is exactly the kind of political reflex that Europe must resist if it wants to remain loyal to itself and to succeed in a dramatically changing world.

When a European minister, even post-Brexit, who we might have some understanding because there is a trauma there, chooses to single out a small community to score a political point, something very important is exposed. Fear speaks louder than facts. Stereotypes travel faster than truth. And demagoguery still finds an audience, a big one.

Yet the facts are very clear.

Since 2022, thanks to intensive joint work, irregular arrivals from Albania to the UK have almost disappeared. Albanians are net contributors to the British economy. The number of Albanians receiving UK benefits is negligible compared to other communities. And yet the story persists, because the story is useful. And here comes the bridge, dear students of the College of Europe in Tirana.

Enlargement, which I see as a reunification, fails wherever stereotypes thrive. And reunification dies wherever fear is louder than knowledge. And Europe weakens wherever facts surrender to narratives. And this is why your presence in this college matters so much. Because Europe’s future, Europe’s future administrators, diplomats, negotiators, and commissioners must be trained not only in law and in policy, but in the courage to resist the easy temptation of scapegoating to recognise the humanity behind migration statistics.

Statistics, and to defend truth when politics tries to twist it. Now, why reunification matters, not for Albania, but for Europe? If Albania believes deeply in the European project, it is because we know, and we know it not because we read the books, we know it in our bones, what Europe saves you from. We were the very last dictatorship in Europe, and we felt all the brutal weight of isolation like none.

We understand the darkness that arrives when a country is cut out of the European bloodstream. But more than that, it’s a new world. When we were in that darkness, the world was not so interconnected.

When we were cut from Europe’s bloodstream, the European organism was not interacting with our own bloodstream. Today, this is unavoidable. It is why, when enlargement stalls, as recent history has taught us, we do not see just a policy delay. We see a warning. And when the European minister targets a small community to feed some political emotion, we do not see just a headline or a simple act of demagoguery. We see a symptom. Because a Europe that normalises small injustices day after day after day, someday will be totally incapable of confronting the great ones.

Let me offer you five truths, in my view, that should guide the next generation of Europeans, meaning you, among the next generation.

Truth number one, reunification heals history. And we have seen it. It has started with the reunification that healed the history between France and Germany. It has continued with many reunifications, and the one between Germany and Germany was a great healer. Because reunification connects and reconnects destinies that totalitarianism and division have amputated.

Truth number two, reunification expands peace. Look at the history of enlargement. Contemporary enlargement has not simply extended the geography, but has extended the space of peace. And has made war far less imaginable between countries that have had many wars and many fights among each other.

Truth number three, reunification fulfils Europe’s promise. Thessaloniki 2003 was not a poetic moment. It was a commitment.

Truth number four, reunification brings energy, brings youthfulness, and brings new opportunities. It has been the case with the previous waves of enlargement. It will be the case with the Western Balkans being reunified with the EU. Because no country that joins is a burden before being an untapped engine of energy, of youthfulness, of new opportunities.

Truth number five, reunification protects Europe from itself. Because Europe, divided, becomes easy to manipulate. Europe united becomes impossible to defeat. Just a matter of choice.

And all these truths are there in the pages of Europe’s history to be illustrated with as many facts as the will to go deeper and to learn from how we came here. Now, when it comes to Albania, we stand with our work done. And it means reforms delivered, it means institutions strengthened, it means patience tested. Also, thanks to some of the member states presented here by some of the ambassadors, namely Germany, the biggest patient, testers of the rest. And I am very thankful for that. Now, I was not when I was tested.

We asked for no privilege, but only for the honour, as Jean Monnet would say, to serve Europe, so that Europe may serve peace. And there are some that, in my view, and in this, I am a minority in this region, rightly so, wonder how we can get more and become 29, become 33, become even 35, if we already can’t work normally with 27.

Yes, to me, in my view, they have a point. And we have to appease, and we have to help. We have to leave behind our national egos and to think like Europeans for a common Europe, in a common Europe that works better than the Europe of today. You don’t need Albanians to veto. I’m not mentioning others because they are even worse. You don’t need to insist that the newcomers should have commissioners. There are other ways.

But you have simply to make up your mind that being inside, being part of this family is the thing that counts. All the rest is procedure. And to stay at the bay, because you are fixated with things that become the fixation of them, and that then they cannot handle with their own public, is crazy.

So if we make it simple, no vetoes, no vote against the majority, no commissioners, no excuses, and no demands, but just responsibility, contribution, and just Europe, then I believe the period after the technical negotiations will be easier, not easy, easier.

So let me finish with a word for two entities, or in two directions, not entities, because Federica is not an entity. Federica, you brought Europe’s most iconic school to a place where, just imagine, in our own lifetime, when I was even older than many of you here, Europe was entirely banned. There was no Europe here. Europe’s music, Europe’s films, Europe’s books, Europe’s art was treated like filth to not even worth imagining touching. It was a brutal deprivation of half a century that turned us into Europe’s most fervent lovers. And when we left the darkness behind, and one of the speakers mentioned that this auditorium is named Freedom because this was the place where the very first moment of the final punch to the regime happened, we were not coordinated, we were not orchestrated or directed by someone. But suddenly, all of us, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of the country, screamed one sentence. I’ve checked.

In no other country that got out of communism was Europe in that sentence. We screamed, we want Albania like Europe. This was our thing. But when we got to Europe, guess what? We realised that love was not exactly what Europe was looking for, looking at us. Love was something that they felt even disturbed to see in our fervour, in our way of taking the boats, taking the mountains, crossing all possible dangers and borders to just go and embrace the beloved Europe. And we entered in a path where we started to familiarise ourselves with words we had never heard before. Although we knew languages, because languages were the only way to understand what was beyond the darkness.

We heard a key and a key alignment. We heard factual summary records, getaway indicators. Meters, transposition deadlines, compliance pathways, staged integration benchmarks, opening, entering, closing, plus the infamous absorption capacity benchmarks. And then it went on and on with screening, pre-screening, bilateral screening, post-screening, the conditioning framework, safeguard mechanisms, due process safeguards, institutional resilience metrics, and risk-based oversight.

So imagine you are in love. You say, I love you. And the other one says, Where are your resilience metrics? You say, I adore you. And the other one says, Where are your safeguard mechanisms? Safeguard mechanism of what? Of my adoration? Yeah, of course. We need to do a post-screening. So our brain became a whole new zoo full of these tiny creatures that took up residence in our minds. And they come, benchmarks, entering, post, screening, chapter, next chapter, cluster.

It’s open, yes, but it’s another one. And in the meantime, we learn the music, the Brussels music. Have you ever heard it? We take note of the progress achieved, which to our ears meant, see you next year. Further efforts are needed, which translates roughly into, go home, baby. Substantial advancement remains to be ensured.

The elegant way of saying, no grudges, but it’s only going to get harder for you. And then the eternal ritornello. Yes, I discovered that the word exists in English as well. The ritornello that Federica has repeated so many times when she came to Albania. We encourage continued engagement. It’s the diplomatic way to say to someone who tells you how much he loves you, to keep trying, darling.

Through all this, to be fair to her, Federica was our sanity keeper. At least I can tell you, if I didn’t get totally crazy, it was because of Federica nursing me. Doing her utmost in the labyrinths of Brussels to make our case. And in the endless meetings until the morning of the Council of the European Union, to tell that we had the value.

She left, finally, those endless corridors. And here she is, where else? Where she is loved with no condition. As you are all loved with no condition in Tirana. Planting is not an institution, by the way. It’s not one college more. It’s not one school more. It’s not one academic year more that is opening today. But it’s a space of faith.

Where I would put at the entrance of the new building the beautiful words of Jean Monnet. When I read them before knowing Europe, I thought, How beautiful! When I went through them, I realised that they are beautiful and terrifying. Europe is never finished. It is always beginning.

Now, the other entity is the students. You are not here to study Europe. You are here to protect Europe. You are here to challenge it as it is. You are here to dare and improve it. And sometimes, you have to prepare to save Europe from itself.

And let me tell you what Europe will need more and more. It’s not weapons. It’s not AI. It’s not money. It’s courage. Courage. Because the storms are gathering. And the next chapter of the European Union will not be decided by how many more weapons we’ll have, how many more AI factories we’ll have, how much more funds or debt we’ll have. But it will be decided in the fight between those who fear enlargement and those who understand that Europe is strongest when no European is left outside the room. And to live outside the room, the Europeans from the Balkans, is a terribly bad idea.

Welcome to the College of Europe.

Welcome to the frontier of Europe’s future. Enjoy Tirana.

Enjoy the auditoriums, but never forget to enjoy the sun outside.

And God bless you. God bless Europe.

And God bless Federica Mogherini.

Thank you.