As part of his visit to the United States of America, Prime Minister Edi Rama met with the Albanian community in Michigan, the first stop on his US agenda, ahead of his engagements in New York as part of the proceedings of the United Nations General Assembly.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Rama praised the contribution of the Albanian diaspora in the United States, its role in strengthening ties with Albania, and the importance of its engagement in the country’s economic, social and civic life. He also announced the forthcoming opening of an Albanian Consulate in Detroit, as a concrete step towards strengthening Albania’s consular services and institutional presence for the Albanian community in Michigan.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for this warm welcome, and I am delighted to be here with you in Michigan, where one of America’s strongest Albanian hearts beats. I would particularly like to thank the organisers of this gathering, first and foremost Fran, who sent me a message some time ago expressing his wish to organise this meeting. Thank you all very much.
I will try not to speak for too long, although, as you may know, I find it difficult to speak briefly. I want to leave time for a conversation with you and to answer your questions, because you can listen to my speeches without necessarily having to meet face to face.
A few days ago, I was reading that not far from where we are today, two or three years ago, some goose hunters spotted a flamingo for the first time. The state bird records committee in America officially confirmed the bird’s presence and classified it as an exceptionally rare sighting.
But, as you know, this summer the flamingo became the most popular symbol of Albania. It left the lagoon, came to Tirana, took over the boulevard, the screens and the digital billboards, and attracted attention from all four corners of the globe.
Until only a few years ago, no one would have imagined that such an elegant, yet also such a fragile and gentle bird, would turn Albania into the focal point of a global, multifaceted debate about nature, development, tourism and Trumpism. Yet beyond the latter, which, truth be told, globalised the flamingo of Zvërnec, there was something deeply meaningful about the civic demonstration held in June. In fact, it attracted not only attention but also support from many people outside Albania, including members of the diaspora.
The truth is that, until yesterday, nature and wildlife were being slaughtered in Albania, perhaps as nowhere else in the world, and no one uttered a word. Until yesterday, Albania was being harmed in many ways, and the world did not even notice it, while Albanians themselves could not really see it either, because life in Albania had developed around the idea that things could always be worse.
Today, now that many things have changed, Albanians have begun to live with the idea that things can also be better, and that civic demonstration was precisely what sealed this new approach within society.
A society that demands more is a society that has risen, that has seen the horizon and that no longer accepts lowering its gaze. But precisely because we have learned to demand more from the government, from the state and from our country, we must also learn to demand more from ourselves as members of this new Albanian society, especially in the way we regard one another when our views do not align.
Before coming here, I heard that several Albanians from this community had called for a protest to coincide with my visit. Naturally, that is their right. However, I would have preferred them to be here as well, standing before me, so that they could voice their objections openly and hear the answers directly.
Among the many wise expressions that human wisdom has given us, I particularly like the one which says that the quality of democratic coexistence is determined not by how often we agree, but by the way in which we disagree.
You may disagree entirely, and you may cut one another with words, each defending your own position, but it is one thing to do so while respecting the other person, and quite another to do so while grabbing each other by the throat.
Democracy is disagreement that excludes hatred; a confrontation that always implies respect; and a struggle in which the end does not justify every means.
In any event, the road towards democracy is much longer than we initially imagined, because merely being free is not enough to create a society in which democracy works for everyone.
Sisters and brothers,
I want to tell you that rarely have I struggled as much as I did this time to put together the words of a speech. I could not avoid addressing what happened in The Hague a few days ago, yet I could not find a way to approach that immense and heavy burden before us—a burden in the face of which, truth be told, words seem futile, just as they do at a funeral. In this case, however, it is a funeral of the living: the burial of people who are still alive, and a nation’s powerlessness in the face of an international disgrace.
There is a phrase that we are often told and that we ourselves frequently repeat: “Respect the court’s decision. Court decisions must be respected.”
The rule of law and the democratic world function on the basis of respect for court decisions, and that is not something we are questioning. Yet it is not only a court decision, even death itself is also accepted in silence only by the person who dies.
The issue in this case is not whether or not to respect the court’s decision. The issue is how to reject the burial alive of four people in the name of the people, when the people themselves cannot recognise themselves anywhere in that decision, a decision delivered not merely in a foreign language, but through the alienation of justice itself.
Naturally, Albania cannot do anything more in this matter than stand by Kosovo. Nevertheless, regardless of how Kosovo’s elected representatives may decide to reject the burial alive of those four men, I believe that the mandatory and unquestionable respect for that court decision can never prevent us from rejecting that burial as an inescapable fate against which there is no appeal.
Dear friends,
On the other hand, today I would like to share with you some news that I believe you will welcome. I have repeatedly heard a request from this community, and the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs will soon open an Albanian consulate in Detroit.
I believe this is the right and well-deserved decision because, as I joked with Fran today, you have managed to turn this American city into one large Albanian “village”. Beyond the joke, which, in this case, is more than half true, Albania must be close to you whenever you need it. The very least that Albania can do in your case is to have a door open here, where you can address all your consular matters.
I am pleased to recall that we began our journey of major gatherings with the diaspora with the first Diaspora Summit ten years ago. Time flies and the years pass. It was November 2016 in Tirana, and it marked the beginning of a path that we discussed and embarked upon together at the time with my friend Hashim Thaçi.
Things were very different then. It was the first pan-Albanian assembly of its kind and, truth be told, we approached it with a special sense of emotion, but also with very few means of turning that powerful, positive feeling into a shared undertaking.
Until recently, the diaspora was a vast sea of energy, but an open sea without boundaries and without a port in which to anchor the contributions, opportunities, ambitions and aspirations of our people living outside Albania, so that they could serve this bond between the diaspora and Albania.
For many years, the diaspora’s connection with Albania was largely embodied in the financial contributions that you tirelessly sent home. Those remittances kept Albania on its feet during the difficult years of its transition, from the time when Albanians lived with the idea that things could always be worse, to the present day, when Albanians now live with the idea that things can also be better.
You did not simply send money. You sent children’s schooling, parents’ medicines, tiles for the roofs of family homes and the initial capital for businesses that started small back home and then grew.
There is one figure that is real. Ninety per cent of Albanian families have benefited from remittances from the diaspora at least once 90 per cent. Nine out of ten Albanians have received an education, put a roof over their heads or improved their living conditions thanks to the diaspora, thanks to you and to all those like you who, at least once, but generally far more than once—have sent part of the fruits of their hard work back to Albania.
At the first Summit, we said that we wanted something different and that we wanted to go beyond a relationship based on nostalgia, memories, love and the inseparable family ties between those living abroad and those in Albania. Because, at the end of the day, the diaspora is not the homeland’s bank account; it is experience, it is a network—not only of hearts, but also of minds—it is civic engagement and a great force. And so, over these ten years, new mechanisms have been created which, of course, need to be strengthened and perfected.
Over these ten years, the conditions have also been created for people living abroad, through our digital interaction system, e-Albania, to access Albania’s institutions and public offices without having to return, but simply through the digital screen of their mobile phone. And today, after these ten years, I come here to you convinced that what we began back then has borne fruit and has created the foundations for bearing even more fruit tomorrow.
Albania today is completely different from what it was ten years ago in every respect. But, as I have already said, comparing it with what it was ten years ago is no longer enough, because now everyone expects much more—not in the next ten years, but tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next month, next year and so on.
Last year, for the first time, you had the opportunity to vote from here, from outside the homeland, in Albania’s parliamentary elections. It was the first time that ballot papers crossed the ocean and that the contract between Albanians and their representatives was also established beyond Albania’s borders.
Following the fourth Diaspora Summit, which we held in April, we began implementing the National Diaspora Strategy 2030. It has now been mapped out, and all that remains is for us to materialise it step by step, making it possible for the diaspora to feel closer, not merely emotionally, but concretely.
Albania needs to have far more knowledge about Albanians living outside the homeland, and Albanians living outside the homeland need to have far greater access to Albania. For this reason, we are creating the National Diaspora Register, a one-stop shop where every Albanian around the world can find their own state with a single click. Professional networks, dedicated windows for diaspora investors- all these are part of a worksite in progress, just as Albania itself is a worksite undergoing transformation. And like every worksite, there is dust, and there is noise. Sometimes the noise becomes deafening; there are inconveniences, there are delays, and there are also mistakes that need to be corrected. But what matters is that the worksite is active, that the work continues, that the foundations are now strong, the new Albania is taking shape—not only in form, but also in meaning.
You—Albanians living abroad—are the most objective supervisors of this worksite because, being at a distance, you are able to process many things more easily. And by returning at different times, you are able to see the change more clearly, because you do not experience the worksite every day, with its dust, its noise and all its problems. Instead, you see the result, and you see that, although everything is still a work in progress and much remains to be done, many things have already been accomplished and are there for all to see.
They have been accomplished and are there, and they have given Albania every reason to become the country that, as we speak today, has managed to attract 12 million visitors a year.
It is the country that, for the fifth or sixth consecutive year, has had the fastest-growing airport in the region—not only the highest relative growth compared with its own previous figures, but also the airport with the largest number of passengers, overtaking the airport that, for almost a century or more, had been the region’s main airport: Belgrade.
It is an Albania that today, having opened all the negotiating chapters for membership of the European Union, is gradually beginning to enter the phase of closing those chapters, intending to bring the long history of its efforts to unite with Europe to an end by 2030, and of Albania taking its place at the same table, not merely as a presence, but as a state with equal rights and an equal position at the common table of the family of a united Europe.
On the other hand, I believe you all know that Albania is the country where the next NATO Summit will be held, and where all the leaders of the most powerful military alliance in the history of humankind will gather in Tirana to discuss the Alliance’s progress and decide on further steps.
And today, one century after the renowned Kosta Çekrezi recounted in Albania: Past and Present how he would send letters to Albania only for them to be returned because “Albania” did not even exist as an address, he would bear witness to the fact that today Albania is no longer an address missing from the map of the world, but an address where the free world happens to gather to discuss its future.
And the Albania that once knocked on doors that would not open is today no longer waiting in the corridor, but is part of all the spaces where it should be. And even though Albania is a small country, that Albania is not among the wealthy countries and that Albania does not possess a military force with which to impose itself on anyone, today Albania is a country that not only gives respect, but also receives respect and is valued in return, just as it values others.
An Albania that is economically strong, democratically strong and strong as a state is an Albania that is currently taking shape, and it is an Albania that is now seen as such by everyone.
Albania is a shared legacy belonging to all of us, where each person, in the role that has fallen to them, makes their own contribution—whether in Tirana as Prime Minister or in Detroit as an Albanian who earns an honest living, pays taxes to this state and also contributes to the mother country. But what I believe is most important is that Albania today is no longer what it unfortunately was until yesterday: a country that left its own people exposed because it was unable to protect them. Today, Albania is the best shield for every Albanian, wherever they may be.
Today, Albania is a name and a flag that everyone respects. Today, Albania is an identity before which—as you yourselves can testify—everyone stands with respect. And by showing respect for this identity, they also respect every Albanian, unlike until yesterday, when being Albanian was an unjust, yet ever-present, reason to begin any competition at a disadvantage compared with others, simply because you were Albanian. Today, no one sends Albanians to the back of the queue because they are Albanian. On the contrary, when people hear that they are Albanian, they value them because they hold Albania in high regard.
The American dream has not dried up the Albanian roots within you, and this is the most extraordinary thing you do for our shared homeland. You prove that roots can be nourished even from very far away and can even accomplish the miracle of bearing fruit simultaneously in two different countries: both in the motherland and in the homeland that adopted you.
It was in 1926, one hundred years ago, that Faik Konica began his journey in Washington. He was Albania’s first envoy to the United States—our ambassador, as we would call him today—even though Ervin Bushati does not quite strike us as the Faik Konica of our time. But who knows? Perhaps one hundred years from now, someone will come here and say that Ervin Bushati was here one hundred years earlier.
Faik Konica began his mission by paying his respects at President Wilson’s grave, and then continued with a marathon of meetings throughout America. America had helped Albania avoid disappearing, and he came and stayed here to give Albania a voice, to give Albania a face and to give Albania an address.
Today, one hundred years later, hundreds of thousands of Albanians give Albania a voice, give Albania a face and give Albania hundreds of thousands of addresses here in the United States. And today, Ervin Bushati has it much easier than Faik Konica because, whether Ervin Bushati comes or not, there are hundreds of thousands of others who, without having been officially appointed by the state as ambassadors, serve as worthy representatives of their country. And you are Albania’s everyday ambassadors. Every time an Albanian succeeds here through their own work, you can be certain that Albania also rises in America’s eyes.
And so, 28,000 square kilometres have fallen to our share on this earth as the territory of our homeland. But thanks to you, and thanks to so many others, Albania’s boundaries today extend far beyond those 28,000 square kilometres. More than ever before, Albania today is both there and here. Albania is here, but it is also there.
And so, with great respect and great admiration for all of you, because I experienced the life of an emigrant for several years and I know very well what it means. At the same time, believe me, I try to understand, although I cannot fully understand, what it means to wake up every day and go to work, or to create jobs for those who are here, while still remembering that, at the end of the day, this is not the land of your roots; and what it means to put down roots in a country where, at the very beginning, you are a foreigner, then you become a neighbour, and eventually you become the master of your own home.
I have immense respect for you, and it is a great pleasure to be here with you!
