The “Tirana platform” is a myth created by Macedonian politicians with bad taste, and Europe will face a nightmare if the Balkans “go crazy” because EU accession is off the agenda, with the region becoming a “gray area in which other other “actors” have more influence than the European Union, said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in an interview with the European edition of the influential American magazine “Politico“.
Rama says that he is not for the unification of Albania and Kosovo, however he would not exclude the possibility if EU integration in the region remains at its current level, because, as he says, “nobody would like to turn in on themsleves and loof for smaller unions, everyone would like to unite in the big union” and that “if there’s no hope, no perspecitve, no space, then, of course, little uynions may happen.”
At the same time, Rama defended the platform of the Albanian parties in Macedonia and said that he had merely facilitated the meeting of the Albanian parties in Macedonia and was not trying to interfere in the country’s domestic politics.”
“There is a myth created in Skopje for political purposes that the Albanian parties are following a platform that is written in Tirana. This is a lie, a myth created by the politics of very bad taste,” he said. “The attack on the platform is very dangerous because it’s a kind of politics that fuels divisiveness and not unity … The last thing Macedonia needs, the last thing we all need, is to fuel interethnic conflict, because you can’t control these kinds of things.”
The Albanian Prime Minister added that Albanians in Macedonia have an “absolute right to ask for full equality with their Macedonian brothers”, and that the platform largely demands rights and freedoms laid out in the 2001 Ohrid Agreement.
