Ropke: Support to make Albania a member

The Prime Minister of the country, Edi Rama, gave a joint statement with the President of the European Economic and Social Committee, Oliver Ropke. During his speech, Ropke said that major support is needed for the expansion for Albania to become a member of the European Union.

Further, Ropke gave details on the decisions they made, one of which is the initiative of the candidate countries, as he added that a lot of work has been done to involve civil society. Regarding Albania, Ropke has emphasized that they have 18 members from trade unions, who have worked on 2 very important opinions for the future of EU cohesion policy.

Oliver Ropke: During this visit, we had many visits with the prime minister, with the ministers and with the civil society because we are the lawyers of the civil society and the message was that our major support is needed for the enlargement for Albania to become a member of the EU. We cannot disappoint the aspirations of Albanian citizens.

We made the decision to implement one of the most important priorities that I had with my manifesto, which is what is called the candidate countries initiative. We all appreciated the fact that Prime Minister Rama, as well as his counterpart from Montenegro, were part of the inauguration in February. Since then we have done a lot of work in involving civil society in our daily work.

Regarding Albania, we have 18 members from the trade unions, who have worked on 2 very important opinions for the future of EU cohesion policy. This initiative has been successful.

We are grateful for the support of the European Commission. We are determined to continue with this project because we cannot disappoint any of the countries in the region, in the gradual inclusion of the candidate countries. We are the vanguard of this methodology here in the EU.

The civil society in Tirana has a great desire to go even further with this initiative and it is time to take the next step, the creation of a consultative body. We are ready, we have the legal basis, we just need to appoint the members and we can continue. We need to start with this next step.

We adopted a resolution for the next legislative term. Our approach to integrate the candidate countries, outlined in this resolution. We also call on the institutions for support for the membership of the Western Balkan countries, and there we have emphasized the important function that the committees will have. The process must be reliable and we must not take our eyes and attention away from this important moment.