As made all the heavy work. I'm trying simply to be a good host, and I'm relying on English because I don't rely on translators.
First of all, I apologize. I feel horrible that we left you waiting for quite some time. I can guarantee you that this is not a pattern. It's just because we had another meeting with the president, so it took longer, and I felt even more guilty when I saw that you were kept in this dark room waiting for us while outside is so beautiful.
I want to thank Andreas for being here again and for not being yet tired of us. But I believe that he has at the same time good reasons to come back because Albania is a very good place to be and is the best place where you can escape Brussels.
And I am very happy to see here Fingerstein, a very old and great friend, a believer in Albania's path towards Europe. Although he somehow has retired from active politics, he can't retire from Albania. It happens all the time. So thank you not for being here, and I want to thank each and every one of you while I leave.
You don't want me to have a read of my long speech and to tell you how wonderful we are doing and how great things are in Albania. I simply want to share with you a few thoughts about the moment — the moment in Albania and the moment for Albania.
When it comes to the mino, I'm sure that you have been quite entertained lately with the flamingos, although I am not sure you'll find them as many and as attractive as they look in the Instagrams of your colleagues from the European Parliament. But I am referring to it because it is the best example of the moment we are having in Albania.
I believe that Albania has done a lot in the last decade and has passed from an era when people always thought it can be worse, in a new era where people think it could be better. So we are leaving that moment in history that Alexis de Tocqueville has defined as the revolution of rising expectations.
People have realized that the country is able to jump high. People have realized that the country is able to become totally different. People have realized that a lot of things are in motion and there is a development that is now visible to everyone. But at the same time, people have questions, and rightly so. They have questions, and naturally so.
These questions are combined with the anxieties of our time in a way it feels very much like being in Europe also in this aspect — in the aspect of anxieties, of uncertainties, of a certain degree of loneliness that is more and more present in our lives and in our space of democracy, where the big confusion between freedom of speech and freedom of reach has created an amount of pressure coming from a lot of, let's say, inaccurate news and a lot of conspiracy theories and so on and so forth that have added to the socially heavy moment.
But on the other hand, in comparison with the countries of the European Union, we have a big advantage. We Albanians, and Albania as such, because we still love the European Union, which is not exactly the case in your own countries, where mostly the European Union is taken for granted, like a marriage.
While we are fully committed, and you know we have a lot of things that we debate here in the country. We have every day the capacity to find reasons to not agree with each other, even for the most trivial details. But there is one thing that we have never succeeded to disagree with each other on: that we want to be part of Europe and that we love Europe.
So we very much hope, and I very much hope, that Europe will not fail us again, because in the meantime, failing us is more than just failing a group of countries like the Western Balkans, but it's failing itself. And if Europe will fail the Western Balkans, it will not be an easy failure for Europe itself; it will be the failure.
So I hope that although there are different ideas and different psychological and social situations in different countries, and there are those who are very eager to see it happen now, and there are those who are more reluctant, I hope that all, despite how much they are eager or how much they are reluctant, will find a path to give to the world, but also to give to Europe itself, a very strong signal.
And I believe that it's not so difficult to find. It is very easy. It's like the Columbus egg. And it's like Helmut Kohl's moment when the wall collapsed. Helmut Kohl didn't go there to tell the fellow Germans of the East that now you are free and you have 33 chapters to go through. He told them, now we are together, and then from there the whole process of reunification in all details started, and it took long. Maybe it's not yet fully completed when one still sees differences.
But what needs to change, and what can also relieve, I think, the reluctant sides, is to not leave the political decision at the end, but to bring it now, and then to leave for the end the merit-based process of every country. Meaning that there is a coincidence: Ursula has seven kids, the EU has seven candidates. So the Ursula kids didn't grow in the neighborhood; they grew around the table.
She didn't say to her daughter, "Go and spend some time with that Russian gangster at the corner," because now mama is busy. She didn't say to her son, "Go and play with some Chinese toys because now the table is for the adults." Everyone was around the table. But of course, not everyone around the table had the same voice and had the same say and even the same food. Right?
So I think Europe should find the Helmut Kohl moment and say all around the table, everyone, and then what each and everyone takes from the table depends on the merit-based process. You open a chapter and you close it. For that chapter, you are fully a member and you can be part of the table. You are still working on another chapter, then for that chapter you are just one of the kids.
Still, it's not feasible to tell Ukraine lies, for example, but it's very feasible to tell Ukraine, come and sit around the table, and we are all together politically united, one Europe. Then when it comes to the agricultural policy, time will show, life will show, but many other things we have in common together.
We cannot remember that we are one Europe only when there is aggression and we are invited around the table, or only when there is a pandemic and we are around the table, or when there is a wave of illegal immigration hitting Europe and then we are needed around the table because there is a route crossing here. We have to be around the table all the way. It's the Columbus egg. It's very easy. Just do it like Nike. Nike, how they say.
Well, this was my few words. Trust me, I can speak much longer. And I want to again thank everyone, and especially congratulate the new ambassador of the European Union, because it's her first, and to be in your first appearance together with so many people coming from Europe, it's really strength. I don't know how you did it, but it's amazing. So we have to ask more from you.
So what can I say else? I hope that the meeting will not go long and that you will have more time to spend outside, because at the end you'll get more information from the sun, from the colors, from the air, from the food, from the smiles of the people than from our boring speeches. Thank you so much.
And now the floor is to the member of the committee on foreign affairs and rapporteur on Albania, Mr. Andreas Schieder.
