Prime Minister Edi Rama took part in the Annual Conference of the Eastern Committee, an important forum that brings together representatives of politics, business and diplomacy to discuss economic and geopolitical developments, as well as the challenges ahead for Europe.

As guest of honour at the conference, Prime Minister Rama addressed the participants, including representatives of German business, experts in security, economy and innovation, as well as officials from the Bundestag and the Federal Chancellery.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: When one is invited to speak on occasions like this, convention requires beginning with a familiar sentence: “It is a great pleasure and a distinct honour to join you.” But I will not say it that way, because I did not come here merely because this is an important gathering. I came because of the rather unusual convergence of three things: the city where we meet, the moment in which we meet, and the subject I was asked to address.

So let us start with Berlin, the place where perhaps the greatest geopolitical transformation of our lifetime became reality. And not only because a wall fell, but because, after the wall fell, a leader emerged with the courage to understand what history demanded next.

Helmut Kohl did not see German reunification as an administrative challenge. He saw it as a geopolitical necessity. Against caution, against scepticism, against the conventional wisdom of the time, he decided that Germany should become one country again. History proved him right.

I begin with Berlin and with Kohl not because this audience needs a reminder of Germany’s importance to Europe. I do so because I increasingly believe that Europe itself is approaching a very similar moment: a moment when continuing to manage reality through procedures, hesitations, and inherited assumptions is becoming more dangerous than taking strategic decisions.

A moment that calls for what I would describe as a new Helmut Kohl moment. Because Europe today faces a question remarkably like the one Germany faced then: whether reunification is merely an aspiration to be administered indefinitely, or a necessity that must finally be accomplished.

And this brings me directly to the subject I was asked to address, Albania’s European future — reform, resilience, and innovation in a changing geopolitical landscape.

Back to another great German leader, Konrad Adenauer, one of the founding fathers of modern Europe, who once wisely noted: “European unity was a dream of a few; it became a hope for many. Today it is a necessity for all.” I believe those words have never been more relevant than they are today.

We meet at a time when the rules-based international order is under severe pressure. War has returned to Europe. Strategic competition has become global. Technology is transforming economies, political systems, and societies at a speed never witnessed before. It is also transforming the very way we relate to one another and experience everyday life.

Demographic decline is reshaping entire regions, and a severe demographic winter threatens Europe’s near future. Economic security has become inseparable from national security. Political resilience has become inseparable from informational resilience.

Europe is no longer the continent of perpetual peace and prosperity it believed itself to be until very recently. Europe has once again become a great power confronted by great challenges at one of the great crossroads of its history. In such circumstances, strategic hesitation becomes a luxury, and fragmentation becomes a vulnerability.

Dear friends,

Thanks to Katharina’s presentation, you all now know that I am the greatest painter among prime ministers. I would dare say among chancellors too. But it does not take a great painter, frankly, to see that what is left out of a composition often reveals more than what is put in.

A few months ago, the European Council endorsed the most ambitious integration blueprint since Jacques Delors: “One Europe, One Market.” A highly ambitious document — necessary, forward-looking, strategic. Yet one thing was missing: the whole Western Balkans.

A region surrounded by European Union borders. A region physically located at the heart of Europe. A region absent, once again, from Europe’s vision of itself. Like an empty space at the centre of the canvas. Like Europe painting a self-portrait that resembles Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”.

Particularly strange when that very space sits on one of Europe’s oldest strategic corridors. More than 2,000 years ago, the Romans built the Via Egnatia. It connected East and West, markets with markets, people with people, power with power. The Romans understood something that we occasionally forget connectivity is not infrastructure. Connectivity is power. And a system is only as strong as its missing link. Twenty centuries later, Europe is discussing energy corridors, digital corridors, military mobility corridors, strategic supply chains, and technological sovereignty. Yet the region through which many of those corridors naturally pass remains outside the architecture.

The energy corridors Europe needs cross our geography. The digital networks Europe wants to require our territory. The critical minerals Europe has suddenly rediscovered as strategic lie largely beneath our soil.

China understands this. Russia certainly understands it. Europe understands it too but sometimes forgets when writing its own plans. And guess what? Via Egnatia crossed the continent exactly where Albania is today.

Albania has opened all 33 negotiating chapters faster than any candidate country in the history of enlargement. But to be fair to the truth, not because we are the best. Rather because we started too late and we were prepared. We are advancing with fierce determination, and we have a very clear objective: to conclude negotiations by 2027 — something we have discussed and agreed upon with the European Commission — and to become a full member of the European Union before the end of this decade.

Let me be equally clear. For Albania, accession is not simply about entering a club. It is not about receiving funds. It is not about acquiring institutional ornaments. It is about transforming our state, our institutions, and our way of thinking. It is about completing the most profound democratic transformation in our national history.

And, in the meantime, guaranteeing that, once and for all in our history, we are where the people want to be, and not where history decided for us to be.

I have been among the first voices from our region to advocate the abundant benefits of gradual integration. But gradual integration cannot become perpetual postponement. It cannot become another waiting room. Because if reunifying Europe is truly a strategic necessity, then the Western Balkans cannot remain trapped between the objective assessments of the Commission and the subjective anxieties of some member states.

That contradiction is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The solution is neither complicated nor costly. Bring us into Europe’s strategic architecture now. Give us seats before giving us vetoes. Give us participation before giving us commissioners. Give us responsibility before giving us every institutional ornament.

Then, step by step, bring us into the Energy Union, the Digital Union, common security frameworks, common financial instruments, and common supply chains. Because Europe cannot seriously speak about strategic autonomy while maintaining a strategic vacuum at its centre and keeping an open wound on its eastern flank.

Helmut Kohl, at least to my knowledge, did not ask whether reunification was administratively perfect. And he did not tell his fellow Germans in the East: “Enjoy your freedom. Now you have 33 chapters to go through.”

He asked a fundamentally different question: Perhaps that is the question Europe should ask itself today. History rarely moves because bureaucracy is ready. History moves because leaders decide it must. And Europe cannot afford to spend its time revisiting the famous Byzantine debate about the sex of the angels while the walls of Constantinople are already shaking from the storm gathering outside.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Europe’s future will not be decided only by geopolitics. It will also be decided by innovation. The next great contest among nations will not be fought primarily through territory. It will be fought through intelligence. Artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, scientific research, technological sovereignty, and the capacity to innovate faster than competitors.

Artificial intelligence is not merely another technological revolution. It is rapidly becoming the infrastructure upon which economic power, military capability, scientific leadership, and democratic resilience increasingly depend. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, technological leadership may determine not only who becomes wealthier, but who remains sovereign.

Europe clearly understands this. That is why it increasingly speaks about technological sovereignty. But sovereignty requires scale, and scale requires integration. No continent can seriously aspire to lead the AI revolution while voluntarily leaving millions of citizens, thousands of engineers, strategic geography, and untapped talent outside its innovation ecosystem. Europe cannot win the race of the 21st century with one hand tied behind its back.

For its part, Albania, despite its modest size, is pursuing a very ambitious digital transformation. We are redesigning public administration around technology. We have digitalized 95% of our public services. Reducing bureaucracy is our obsession. We are deploying artificial intelligence across government, not because technology is fashionable, but because innovation has become the shortest road from the periphery to the centre. A greener, more digital, and more innovative Albania is good not only for us. It is good for Europe. Europe’s competitiveness will increasingly depend on mobilizing all its talent, all of its geography, and all its potential.

The Western Balkans are not merely candidates for membership. We are contributors to Europe’s future competitiveness. The sooner Europe begins to see enlargement not as a concession, but as an investment, the stronger Europe itself will become.

This brings me to what I increasingly consider one of Europe’s greatest challenges. A challenge less visible than military threats. Less dramatic than economic crises. Yet potentially just as dangerous, if not more dangerous. The corrosion of democracy itself.

For decades, we assumed that more information would automatically produce better-informed citizens. That assumption turned out to be wrong. Today, lies travel far faster than facts. We as Albanians know this from an old proverb: “When lies have made the tour of the world, the truth is still putting on its pants.” Outrage spreads faster than evidence. Algorithms reward anger more generously than truth, because truth is boring. Lies are entertaining. Digital mobs can become more influential than democratic institutions. Entire realities can be manufactured before facts have time to leave the ground.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of our age is that we have increasingly confused freedom of speech with freedom of reach. They are not the same thing. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy. Freedom of reach is an unprecedented technological power that no democracy has ever had to confront before.

For the first half of my life, I lived under dictatorship. I know very well how propaganda works. Suffocate genuine freedom of speech. Maximize the reach of your own falsehoods. The tools have changed. The mechanism has not. What is different today is the industrialization of reach. A lie no longer needs a ministry of propaganda. A falsehood no longer needs a regime newspaper. A manipulation no longer needs a state broadcaster. An algorithm can now accomplish in minutes what propaganda machines once required years to achieve.

In the past, authoritarian systems restricted freedom of speech to monopolize reach. Today, democratic societies protect unlimited reach in the name of freedom of speech. This is crazy because the two are not the same. Freedom of speech protects citizens from censorship. Freedom of reach provides unprecedented power to those who manipulate perception.

So, we face a very uncomfortable question: How much longer can democratic societies continue treating this phenomenon as if it were merely an extension of free speech? And for how much longer will mainstream politics continue to delude itself that this is not the main force imploding the political centre itself?  Because when coordinated manipulation networks, algorithmic amplification, and industrial-scale disinformation shape public perception, influence elections, destabilize institutions, and distort reality itself, we are no longer discussing only speech. We are discussing power. We are discussing security. We are discussing sovereignty.

Europe is investing hundreds of billions of euros in military capabilities, air defence systems, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, and strategic autonomy. All of this is necessary. But what value will these shields have if our societies remain defenceless against the systemic manipulation of human minds? What value will territorial security have if citizens progressively lose the ability to distinguish facts from fabrications, friends from enemies, common interests from adverse interests? But an avalanche of households powerful enough to crack the very architecture of our democratic life. And unlike conventional attacks, the objective is not to occupy territory. The objective is to occupy perception, to weaken trust, to divide societies, to paralyze democratic decision-making, to make citizens doubt and blame everyone they are represented from and everything except their own digital tribe.

Europe does not need only a shield from missiles. It also needs a shield from the age of algorithms. And if I had to choose where to begin, I would begin with the second. In recent weeks, my own country experienced and is still experiencing a very vivid example. A proposed tourism development project in Albania’s coast suddenly became the centre of an international digital storm. Environmental catastrophe was presented as an established fact.

Corruption was declared proven before any proof existed. Conspiracies multiplied by the hour. Claims became headlines, headlines became truths, truths became dogmas. And anyone asking for evidence was treated as a suspect. I mention this not because the project itself matters to Europe. It does. But what matters even more is what the episode reveals. Outrage, generated millions of impressions before any of the facts had a chance to speak by itself. Narratives travelled around the world before documented procedures could travel across a single channel. This is no longer an Albanian phenomenon. It is a European phenomenon, an American phenomenon, a democratic phenomenon. And if democracies fail to defend the distinction between facts and fictions, between scrutiny and hysteria, between criticism and digital lynching, they’ll lose sooner rather than later something far more than any single political argument. The trust that democracy is worth it.

And when trust disappears, institutions change in their own physiological being. And when institutions change their own physiological being, mainstream politics loses legitimacy. And when legitimacy erodes, demagogues flourish, the centre disappears, the margins expand, politics becomes a competition in escalation rather than a search for solutions. What appears extreme today, and this is the craziest thing, is challenged tomorrow by something even more extreme.

Democracy never collapsed because people stopped voting. Democracy collapses when citizens stop believing that truth exists independently of the tribe affiliation. This is how democratic systems are hollowed out from within, not through tanks, not through coup, but through the gradual replacement of reality with competing tribes of alternative realities.

This is why Europe’s future depends not only on military strength, economic competitiveness or technological innovation. It depends on our ability to defend reality itself, to defend evidence, to defend reason, to defend the difficult but indispensable discipline of facts. Well, Europe today needs courage, the courage to reunify, the courage to innovate, the courage to recognize that the enlargement is not charity, it is strategy, and the courage to defend democracy not only against those who attack it from outside, but also against the slow corrosion that can weaken it from within.

So, Albania is ready to keep going, ready to reform, ready to innovate, ready to contribute, to carry its share of responsibility, but the real question is not whether Albania is ready,

The real question is whether Europe is ready. Ready to complete the unfinished work of its own history. Ready to reunify its geography with its strategic imagination. Ready to act on necessity rather than manage postponement. Because history rarely waits for perfect procedures. It waits for leadership willing to recognize the moment and act accordingly. And here, in Berlin, Where Germany once found the courage to peacefully reunite what history had forcefully divided, the question before Europe becomes very crystal clear. Is Europe ready for its next Helmut Kohl moment? I don’t have the answer.

Thank you very much.