Bushati: Happy Day for Albania

European Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ditmir Bushati said today during a press conference following the EU's decision to start negotiations with Albania in June 2019 that this is a positive response to membership in the European bloc.

Bushat stated that “The Council urged the European Commission to start the preparation process with Albania without delay, as it has clearly designed the way for membership talks. It has also set a deadline, June 2019, for starting membership talks”.

He emphasises that “is a known practice for the EU, which in Serbia's case, even in Montenegro's case, has set a deadline, where preparation work took place. Commissioner, Johannes Hahn is very clear today. We believe that Albania is already on the irreversible path to the EU integration process”.

Chief diplomat Bushati points out that today's <x0-discreets witnessed one thing that we have long said; the course of reforms Albania has undertaken, especially from the moment of receiving candidate status, is a course of impressive reforms, which should be further deepen in the days and months following”.

We will sit with the EC without wasting time in order for June of next year to find Albania in a solid process. Today, too, was an important day for the European project” itself, Bushati underlined, adding that the last “72 hours have been difficult hours when we had to communicate with all decision-making levels to communicate with detail the reform process”.

Unfortunately, these days a good portion of Albanian politics, the media had set June 28th as the day of betting or accounting with the government and Edi Rama as if the integration process was related to the fate of a government. This is a process that concerns the fate of Albania and Albanians. I'm glad the bet of these speculants doesn't come true today. Today is not a happy day just for the government, but it is a happy day for all the Albanian people of”, the minister said.

“I hope no one, despite the wrong bet he had put on, should feel excluded from this day and this joint success”, he added.