Prime Minister Rama held a conversation with a group of pensioners on the measures recently undertaken by the government in support of them and other social categories, where he emphasized a series of interventions in specific areas, including support for persons with disabilities, the promotion of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as the improvement of public services, with the aim of strengthening the social and economic dimension of government policies.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you all! I want to speak a little more simply about the fact that the government decided to give another bonus to pensioners. You remember, I believe, that last year it was said that they are giving a bonus for the campaign. We do not have a campaign this year. We do not have elections until 2029, so the bonus has nothing to do with anything else, except with the attention that we have promised you we will have continuously, not only to implement the new policy that we decided on and that you are already feeling, for the annual increase of pensions, but also by standing close to you when the economy gives us the opportunity.

And there is, for example, one component that we had not foreseen in our revenues, which was the increase in revenues from the rise in the price of oil. The price of oil went up and, naturally, tax revenues also increased, all those that are included there in the price for the state budget. All that part that came from the price increase because of the war will be received by you, will be received by pensioners.

So even those who complained that the price went up should feel good, because in this way they have contributed so that one part of this bonus also comes from them. Whoever uses a car pollutes; pensioners do not pollute, and it is the most natural thing that one part of this bonus also comes from that revenue.

So, not a single euro that has been added to the budget from the revenue forecasts due to the price of oil has been kept in the budget but has become part of the bonus that pensioners will receive starting today. The same applies also to the exceeding of forecasts in the growth of revenues in general, which today are part of this bonus. But it is not only pensioners; there are also people with disabilities who have long been waiting for exactly what we did: the doubling of assistance for people with disabilities.

Certainly, it was due to you earlier, but the possibilities did not allow us to do this. There are children with special abilities. You remember that we pledged that we would double the support for all children with special abilities. Yesterday the decision was taken, and the implementation begins to double this support, and it is not a temporary doubling; it is a doubling that will be there in every budget. So, it is foreseen for every budget.

Another problem we have had has been the problem of the burden on caregivers of persons with disabilities, for whom staying close to a person with disabilities translated into a lack of opportunities to pay social insurance and health insurance, isn’t that right, director? Since yesterday, it has been decided that all social and health insurance for caregivers of persons with disabilities will be paid by the state.

The growth of the economy has given us the opportunity, by increasing revenues, to increase the sovereign guarantee, to bring the sovereign guarantee to 50 million euros, which the Albanian government will make available to all those who have a business and want to double it. We are talking about small and medium-sized businesses. We are not talking about big businesses. So, anyone who has an enterprise and needs financial support to double their enterprise will benefit from the sovereign guarantee program and from the new credit line that the Bank of Albania has made available.

And at this point, we will not stop increasing support in relation to the growth of demand, because everyone who has opened a small or medium-sized business, has opened a small or medium-sized enterprise, and who has the ideas and the will to grow it, to double it, and lacks the financial base, will not be alone; they will have us in support, and we will give them the guarantee and we will give them the loan with an interest rate completely different from the commercial interest rate of bank loans.

We have set up another fund to make a transformation. We have promised this as well. These are all things promised and they are commitments kept, but commitments are not kept in the blink of an eye. Commitments are kept by creating the possibilities. When the possibilities are not there — and this is the only work we have, expanding the possibilities. The expansion of possibilities is done by expanding the financial base available to the state, and the expansion of this base is done by expanding the volume of the economy.

We started this work with the overall production of Albania’s economy under 10 billion euros. Today we are over 27 billion euros, but we want to bring it to 35 billion by 2030. To bring it to 35 billion by 2030, we must grow the economy with investments. We must have domestic investments, and we must also have foreign investments. But I will come here too, because I know that you are interested in these hot topics, since you do these pencil calculations better than the minister, better than the ladies here, and certainly better than me, because I am just a painter, I do not know how to do calculations.

What I was saying is that we have pledged to bring a new dimension to public transport and, for this reason, we have made a project, which is a project of the Albanian Development Fund in cooperation with the municipalities, with the coordination of the Minister of Local Government, to make available to municipalities, initially, and then continuing with the municipalities that are tourist municipalities, where the number of tourists increases in summer, a number of electric buses that do not consume fuel, but run on electricity, and that will be an added force in an environment where tourists have increased tremendously, but where public transport has lagged behind.

And in parallel with this, we have also decided on another volume of financing to continue with protection from floods, protection from fires, and so on, for machinery that will be made available to municipalities, and we will create a consolidated protection system at the national level.

There are also several other interventions, but these are the ones that I can say have a direct impact, whether on the economy, on urban development, on rural development, and, certainly, on the social aspect.

Meanwhile, we have now doubled and, I believe, in these days we will do it, we have doubled the financing for young people, young women and men who deal with technology and who create start-ups, which then open the way to create businesses, where we have seen, thanks also to this support that we have provided over the years, a major increase in applications. We started with forty-something applications. We have reached one thousand one hundred and eighty-something, or two hundred, it does not matter, but we have passed over 1,000 and, since the fund we had available was insufficient to finance the projects that have potential, we have decided to double that fund.

And we have not forgotten, nor can we forget, that the “Achilles’ heel” in all this progress is healthcare, where now the major transformation we have made of the infrastructure must be accompanied by an increase in the quality of service, the quality of medicines, and so on.

But since that ugly crisis of the Oncology Hospital happened, we have been focused there and, with the normative act, yesterday we allocated 15 million euros only for oncology medicines, which will strengthen the capacities of the system to continue doing the best for the treatment of patients, and also a series of other financing for healthcare.

Meanwhile, we are preparing to make another leap, always based on the mandate we have received, the trust that has been given to us, and all those commitments that have created this trust, and we will have to address very aggressively, over the next three years, the necessity of significantly increasing the quality of service in our healthcare system. And we will do this through partnerships. This cannot be done alone; we will do it through partnerships, because here a great confusion is being created.

Here, for about a month, we have been hearing very great absurdities, but I do not think that Albania and Albanians have been left to reinvent the wheel. I do not think that Albania and Albanians have a “thirst” or a “hunger” for another social and ideological experiment, because we have tried them in the past.

I think that we must be determined to increase our capacities to compete with others and, if all countries, all states, democratic states, kingdoms, autocracies, dictatorships, whatever you want, all of them aim to increase foreign investment, Albania cannot consider foreign investments as a threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity. And as for patriotism and love of country, it is not patriotism to refuse foreign investments.

Patriotism is to increase the economic capacity of the country and to increase the volume of revenues in the pockets of pensioners, in the pockets of those who serve the state and, certainly, also in the pockets of businesses.

Patriotism is not to be satisfied with what has been achieved today, because if Albania is satisfied with the tourism, it has achieved today, Albania will fall into another pit, into the pit into which countries have fallen that have remained hostage to mass tourism.

Mass tourism has given us an extraordinary hand in spreading the words all over the planet that this is a country worth coming to, this is a country where there is hospitality, this is a country where there is natural beauty.

But mass tourism also comes with problems, problems that begin with the increased stress on the system to collect garbage and process waste, to the stress created on all the infrastructure and, without question, then also to the fact that all the energy made available to cope with this large volume does not translate into revenue effectiveness.

Many people come and consume little for the size of the group that comes. We need fewer people and more money here. But, for fewer people to come and leave more money here, we need to have hospitality infrastructure of another level, because those people who leave a lot of money want another level.

Now, all kinds of charlatans, all kinds of delusional people, all kinds of failures who have been tested on the public stage and who have accumulated a very great resentment, because it seems to them that their failure is my fault and the fault of our government, make theories and throw all kinds of sour grapes to the people, saying that these luxury resorts are only for those who come and that Albanians are outside the system.

This is madness, because those are “factories” that create movement in the economy. They are not closed systems where people come, enter and leave and no one sees them. They may not see them, but the entire economy around them is set in motion, because those “factories,” in quotation marks, but in fact that is what they are, need the whole production system, they need the farmers around them, they need all domestic products, they need the whole transport system around them, they need all those who fish, all those who raise and take care of livestock, and so on.

And it is proven, and it is on paper, that those kinds of investments bring, for every euro left inside the hotels there, 1.6 to 2 euros created outside. But, more than all of this, one very simple fact speaks: Albania has an economy of 27 billion and something euros a year, in total. Now, an investment of 4 billion euros comes into an economy of 27 billion euros. It is something massive, transformative, and certainly, meanwhile, these also have another impact. They open the way for others. Meanwhile, if you “put your foot on the throat” of the first one, you have driven away the others, and what have you done? You have gifted the competition what it was barely possible to bring to you.

These are Albanian wonders. Albanian wonders of that kind of Albanian whom Faik Konica defined perfectly: “I forgive you everything, but I do not forgive you success.” Success is not forgiven; everything else is forgiven.

Today they sent me several editions of “National Geographic.” In “National Geographic,” which is the magazine that deals with nature at the global level, Albania in 2013 was a horror: photographs of killed animals and birds, photographs of hunters in the lagoon with birds laid out… Where were these people? Where were they?

Do these people have a problem with constructions, with architects, and with the beauties that are being built here? But why do they not have a problem with all those uglinesses that have been built up and down, as badly as possible? But why do they not go and raise their voice for residents who still cannot get their property certificates today, because the builders left them without property certificates and disappeared without finishing their apartment building, once upon a time, for years and years, and so on and so forth?

So, all these are part of a very clear confrontation around the question: what kind of Albania do we want? How do we want Albania in 2030, in 2035, in 2040? How do we want development? What kind of tourism do we want? How do we understand making nature and the beauties of nature available for the economy of people?

We are not birds. Therefore we must protect the birds and increase the number of birds, and find the way so that, from the coexistence between our needs and the needs of the birds, a virtuous economy is created. And this is the challenge. This is the challenge and this is what we are working for, and this is what we are trying for.

What kind of Albania do we want? Do we want an Albania that plays the role of a global figure that decides who is right and who is wrong in the world? No, not I, at least. I want an Albania that has as many friends as possible, that has as many allies as possible, because it has lived enough of its whole life only with opponents.

I want an Albania that is a country in close friendship with Israel, with the Arab countries, with Turkey, with Greece, and with Europe.

And why do we need these friendships? We need these friendships so that we can grow, strengthen ourselves, benefit from these friendships, benefit from knowledge, benefit from technology through relations with Israel, benefit from defense capacities. We need to benefit from knowledge, to benefit from everything we can benefit from the Gulf countries. Qatar does not have relations with Israel, but we have brotherly relations with Qatar.This is the Albania we need. We need a state with many friends.

So, this story is a very clear story, and I make a very clear distinction between those who go out to protest because they have real concerns, real troubles, real stress and anger for one reason or another; starting with those who have sincere concerns about the fate of the birds. It is a very big thing. It is a very big thing, because people have been killed on this boulevard, people have been killed with the guns of the state for protesting, without doing anything.

Today it is a very big thing that the boulevard of Tirana has become like the carnivals of Rio de Janeiro, followed by the whole world. Isn’t that right? People go, they come out, they propose, they fall in love, they break up, they get married on the boulevard, and this shows that we have created the conditions for freedom and democracy to flourish in this country even in this form.

Some go out there, some watch football, some play basketball, some drink coffee. But this “get up from the café,” “get up from the café,” was what Benito Mussolini’s squadrons said before what came afterward was established there. “Get up from the café” were also those brown shirts of that other one there in Munich. There is no “get up from the café.” Whoever wants to stay in the café will stay in the café. Whoever wants to go to work will go to work. Whoever wants to protest, let them protest.

And the other thing, certainly, is that we are trying to read the message properly, because the protest is not only what is said. The protest is also what is not said, both for good and for bad. The protest is what is not said when paid servants go out there, mercenaries who have come from Pristina and from Tetovo and who act like the diaspora, but it is also what is not said by many who are there, who have not gone out there to make a mess, but have gone out there because they want it better here, more there, more beautiful there. Perfect. And these are separate.

Dictatorship and democracy are distinguished by this. In a dictatorship, the protester is always a threat to national interests and an enemy who appears and must be struck, because in a dictatorship it is presumed that the dictator, the government, and power are always right. In democracy, it is presumed differently. The government is there to make decisions, but every decision of the government can be contested even by a single individual, and that individual has the right to make that contestation without being harmed. And, on the other hand, precisely because everyone has the right to contest, the monopoly of force in democracy belongs to the state, not to the individual, and whoever uses force against the state then enters another territory, because democracy stands on this pact.

The government has the right and the duty to decide, but every citizen and all citizens together have the right to contest a decision of the government. Then we come to the people. None of us is the people. Because I often hear: “I am the people.” No, you are not the people. You are an individual, part of a people. The people are the ones who speak when elections come. Others speak whenever they want, but in the name of the people, the people themselves speak when their turn comes in elections, and no one can come out with any kind of army behind them and say: “We are the people.” Because when they have done in the past “we are the people,” you know very well what came afterward. “We are the people,” Mussolini used to say; “we are the people,” that other one there used to say; “we are the people,” these others here used to say, who made water of the blood of the martyrs. The people are themselves.

And here today there is a river flowing of interests, concerns, troubles, problems, ideas, and there is a black crust over the protest. Take it, look at it one by one, from political failures to social-political failures, to failures of other paths of life who think that now the sea has turned into yogurt and they will take the fate of the country into their hands by violence or by pressure. These things do not happen. Yes, they will choose the prime minister by lottery. Let them choose him, let them choose him. Spartak Ngjela used to say: “How many governments I formed when I was in prison.” The problem is what the people think and how the people speak.

We are today in this phase. They tell me: “No, but do not deal with it.” But who will deal with it? People must be informed. People must know that their right to protest is untouchable, that every form of protest, and especially those creative forms, are welcome, because they are forms that make you, who are at the top, think, that challenge you, and in a country where the opposition has finally abandoned its duty, such a form is welcome, which makes the government think and places it under a pressure that comes from below. But in the protest there are also those whom people must know who they are. They must know when someone is financed by actors who are enemies or not well-wishers, because there are several kinds of actors. They must know when someone who goes out in protest and promises a free and new Albania has their own career characterized by criminal offenses.

Meanwhile, afterward, we will address the problems of the protest in a structured way, not with words, and we will have to make a serious reflection. This is not up for discussion, because we have done many things, but today’s time has higher expectations. People with very high incomes go out in protest. For example, bank employees. Bank employees are paid more than ministers, and they go out in protest. But we cannot say: “No, why are you going out, because you are well off.” We must understand what is not going right for them and how we can address it. We must explain more, we must communicate more, and so on, but these are things that we will certainly do, because we are the Socialist Party. What has always kept us standing and always in shape is that we have not waited for others to change us by force, in the sense that we fail and then change. But we have made efforts to change continuously, to open up.

It is easy. My experience has shown me something: in Albania everyone says, “Bring in young people, include young people.” As soon as you bring in young people: “But what is this? But what is he? But this one? But where did you find this one? But what is this? But this one? But where did you get that village woman?” Well, you are not to blame. Albania is this, and opening up has all its risks. People, every person, has their own values. Someone manages to show them, someone does not manage to show them. Someone needs more time, someone does it faster, but it is very easy to dominate the field when you do not stick your head out and say: “All right then, fine, go ahead, you tell me how you will make Albania.” Because when you then start saying, “I will draw lots and I will hold the assembly in Skanderbeg Square,” then here we enter the field of neurology. We are no longer in the field of politics. Here we are dealing with phenomena of a neurological character, not a logical one, which are not our issue in politics.

These are the things I wanted to share with you, because I know that this is where your mind is. And keep in mind one other thing too, because last year they told you, and these people say that the government, Edi Rama, the Socialist Party clings to pensioners because it has them easily like this. In fact, the only ones who do the math in Albania are pensioners. These people who tap Instagram with their finger, I do not know to what point they manage to reason, but last year they told you: “The spring bonus is for the elections.” Then they told you: “They will increase it for you, but they will not give you the end-of-year bonus.”

Now I am telling you that the bonus you have received today and will receive in the coming days is only the result of six positive months of the economy. It has nothing to do at all with the others. The end-of-year bonus is there for you at the Bank of Albania. You have it there, and there you have your fund. Everything that will come next year will be placed there. Everything that will come the following year will be placed there. And I have told you: next January, the January increase of this year will be doubled. In January 2028 it will be tripled, in January 2029 the increase will be quadrupled, and in January 2030 it will be quintupled. Then, in 2031, you will draw lots.

We are today in a position where we truly must be proud both way people protest and of the fact that everyone in Albania has the right to think, to say whatever they want.

I thank you very much, and it is true, we keep our word, but it is just as true that not all words are kept at the time when you want to keep them, because some things are done faster, some things are done later. Only one thing is certain: every word that we have given, we do not forget until we keep it. That is certain.