Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama believes accession to the European Union is the only path forward for his country.
"We are fanatics. We are not like the others. We are the fanatics of the EU faith," Rama said on Euronews' flagship programme The Europe Conversation, on the sidelines of the EU–Western Balkans summit in Tivat, Montenegro. "Whatever it takes, however it goes, we remain rooted in the EU faith. And so for us, there is no Plan B, there is no alternative, there's nothing."
Albania has been a candidate country since 2014 and opened negotiations to join the EU in 2020. However, the process still appears far from completion, and Rama said he has come to realise that the “old way” of accession no longer works in today’s world.
"We need to find a different approach. But, there is one. One piece of the puzzle missing yet, which I call the Helmut Kohl piece of the puzzle, meaning... politics first, and then the rest follows," he said, referring to the former German Chancellor.
His comments come as France and Germany, ahead of the summit, called for a new process of “structured gradual integration” for EU candidate countries, aimed at granting them earlier benefits from closer integration with the bloc while maintaining the existing merit-based accession framework.
