Important Agreement on the Path to Supporting Albanian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

The Agreement for a new €20 million financing line between the European Investment Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Albania was signed today to support Albanian businesses in innovation, digitalisation, technology, and green investments, marking another important step forward in supporting Albanian small and medium-sized enterprises.

Present at the ceremony were Prime Minister Edi Rama, Minister of Economy and Innovation Delina Ibrahimaj, President of the European Investment Bank Nadia Calviño, who is visiting Albania for the first time, as well as senior executives and representatives of the European Investment Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Albania, etc.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: I’m truly happy to finally welcome to Albania President Calviño. Dear Nadia, you made it after some time, and I can’t be happier after listening to your impression about Tirana, about the country you visit for the first time, because now I’m sure you’ll come back. This is always the problem. It’s not easy to make the first step, but then Albania makes you make the second, third, and more.

We are here for something that is very important to us, and that’s why we wanted to emphasize as much as possible this visit and this encounter with the European Investment Bank, its President, and the leading team, because we hold very dearly the necessity to do everything possible to support all people that believe in free enterprise and believe in their small and medium enterprise. Small and medium enterprises are our most important partners in job creation, in supporting the families, and of course in creating space for young people to grow and in giving to the country so many good things.

That’s why we are here, because we feel now stronger having the European Investment Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo also embarking in an endeavor that we have already started as government together with the central bank and with the private sector to support a large program of doubling the enterprise, which is exactly something that concerns and relates to the small and medium enterprises. But what makes important the stepping in of the European Investment Bank together with Intesa Sanpaolo is not simply the amount of money. In this case, we’ll put for this program a much bigger amount of money. But it is the know-how and it is the possibility to learn from how they will move in this direction and to make the best to take from them the experience they have had in so many years by supporting the European member states in transforming themselves and by supporting SMEs all over the European Union.

Dear Nadia, you asked me before coming here why we would still be stubbornly looking forward to joining the European Union, although the overall situation is not very inspiring nowadays. And I have a very simple answer: because there is no alternative to freedom, individual freedom, and rule of law, meaning equality in front of the law. So, Albania has never had a plan B. Albania has never looked in any other direction, because we know from our history, and we have learned the hard way, that every possible plan B or C is a plan without individual freedom and without equality in front of the law. We have had it for a long time, and we don’t want to even imagine going back there.

Of course, times have changed and other actors are showing up differently, but still the essence is there. There is only one shining city on the hill when it comes to what we cherish most, which is our freedom and our need to live under rule of law. And this is, of course, the European Union for us.

I always say there is a reason why, there are many, but at least in this case I will mention one, why the Afghans or the Iraqis didn’t make it. And this reason is that they didn’t have the European Union as a horizon, as a know-how source, and as a partner in the struggle to build a functioning state with functioning institutions. So, freedom is not enough. It can fade away. Desire to live under the rule of law is not enough. It can fade away. You need the know-how. And the European Union provides know-how that nobody has in the world.

And this is our blessing and this is our chance, and we want to take it. So, you are helping us in that, and I want to make sure that you know that you are right to help us. You are right to believe in us. And you will be even right to take, with some reservation, the still breathing stereotypes about us. We are a country that has problems, but in the meantime, we have come a long way to get where we are, and we know that there is still some way to go until we are part of the European Union.

But in the meantime, we are proud to have made certain things that have changed the relation between the individuals and the state by, as the minister mentioned, transforming our services into a real digital governance platform and giving citizens, for 95% of the services, the possibility to be served without anything else but clicking on their smartphones or computers from wherever they are, in Albania or anywhere in the world.

And in the meantime, we are also very proud to have made such an incredible transformation of our public procurement system, which now is considered by the European Commission experts, namely by SIGMA and OECD, as the best public procurement system in the Western Balkans, and a system that is in the average of the European Union member states.

So, to not take more of your time and not to make this a very long speech, I simply want to tell you that we are looking forward to strengthening the cooperation with the European Investment Bank, as I said, first and foremost for getting as much as possible from your amazing know-how, and of course, secondly, for making you invest more in Albania.

Now, as I informed you, we have the newly founded Albanian Development Bank, which is an instrument that I am very hopeful will be used not just by us, but also by you as an instrument to bridge between us and the European Investment Bank.

I’m very thankful also to Intesa Sanpaolo. I’m thankful to everyone that has contributed so far to everything you mentioned in all directions. And I’m also very thankful that you took seemingly seriously my request for investing a bit more in culture. We need it because culture is what connects us deeply with Europe. It’s what makes us feel European. And more importantly, it makes us understand why Europe is worth fighting for.

Thank you so much.