The Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama said that the “Open Balkan” guarantees vital freedoms for resolving conflicts on our continent.

In his speech at the Regional Transport Summit, Rama reiterated his support for this initiative, which so far has included only Serbia and Northern Macedonia, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo have not joined it.

“It’s a day that starts here today with transport, road safety, sustainability of the development of our entire transport system and then continues for me in Ohrid with another summit of the Open Balkan, in order to move as fast as possible the realization of the free movement of people, goods, capital, services and implementation as soon as possible in this region of the four freedoms of the European Union. “These 4 freedoms of the European Union movement in the Western Balkans are without question what is vital for us, what is vital for security in this region, what is vital for peace and conflict resolution in this area of ​​Europe.” Rama said in his speech.

“I do not want to dwell on the projects, but I am glad that today we have entered another phase thanks to the European investment plan, the economic investment plan and thanks to the increased support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Bank itself. Also thanks to a much greater synergy within the region and a very deep and very concrete understanding of the necessity to unite all these forces for the sake of the future.

We are in an advanced stage of work already for the Blue Corridor, one of the segments of this corridor is already under construction. The other segments are in the final stage of entering the international tender and we are very confident that in the framework of this third governing mandate, we will see a lot of fruits of this very large construction site and perhaps not the end of this important axis.

I very much hope that the European Union will support Montenegro because if the segment that connects Croatia with Albania through Montenegro to finalize the Blue Corridor remains undeveloped at the same time, then certainly part of the meaning of this corridor as a corridor of the European system of transport will be lost.

On the other hand, we are very pleased that Corridor 8 has entered the agenda of discussions and together with Northern Macedonia, with the government of Northern Macedonia, we are coordinated and we very much hope that for this project, which practically means a construction site in “On both sides of the border, support for the economic plan of investments and financial institutions will not be lacking or delayed.”

This Tuesday starts the works of the next Summit within the Open Balkan initiative, which will take place this time in Ohrid.

The summit is preceded by a joint working dinner of leaders and delegations. The work of the summit starts on Wednesday morning and will focus on tourism and culture, for which two plenary sessions will be held. A number of joint agreements will be signed on these sectors.

The leaders of Open Balkan will also hold a press conference at 13:35 on Wednesday. In addition to the three co-founders, Serbia, Albania and northern Macedonia will attend the summit as observers, and Bosnia and Herzegovina with its representatives, and Montenegro with Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic. Kosovo has refused to participate in this meeting.