The EU Ambassador to Tirana, Luigi Soreca in an interview with VOA has expressed his belief that negotiations with Albania will be opened during the Portuguese presidency of the Union in the first 6 months of 2021.
“Now we are really close and I think during the current Portuguese presidency there is really a lot of hope that the first Intergovernmental Conference will be convened by the Council,” he said on Tuesday adding that there is a lot of confidence that negotiations finally begin in the spring of this year.
Albania failed to start such talks last December during the German presidency a delaye which has apparently angered PM Edi Rama.
Regarding the critical tones of Rama towards EU for lack of solidarity with the Balkans in the vaccination process, Soreca said that he was surprised by this attitude of Albanian government head.
“I have to admit that we were surprised by the statement made by the prime minister at the beginning of the year, especially since the solidarity of the European Union has never been as visible as in 2020,” he said.
Soreca admits the development of a vaccination plan has engaged all the countries of the world as well as the EU member states, and this has proved to be very difficult. “We are seeing that the situation of Covid19 in Europe is still very difficult and the number of vaccines that are available is probably smaller than we expected. There is a barrier to vaccine production. Nevertheless, we are ready to help Albania. Yesterday Albania started vaccination, and we are ready to give our help.”
The EU ambassador also talked about the controversial “anti-defamation” bill on online media, which he believed the government will not try to pass again in parliament.
“At European level, the European Commission is presenting a new proposal, such as the Digital Service Act, which opens the debate. I would like this to happen here as well. If the government decides to go back to that, now or in in the future, this must happen, given that there will never be a mechanism that does not involve the media community in decision – making,” Ambassador Soreca said in his interview which is unusually critical to PM Rama by the EU Ambassador as he along with the US ambassador have backed him particularly regarding the judicial reform./argumentum.al
