Prime Minister Edi Rama today is on a working visit to Croatia, where he was received with an official ceremony by the Prime Minister of Croatia Andrej Plenković. Prime Minister Rama and his Croatian counterpart Plenković held a tête-à-tête followed by a bilateral meeting alongside their respective delegations.

Important agreements on economy and health were signed as part of the cooperation between the two countries.

Croatia added up to the list of countries that have signed a deal on mutual recognition of the social insurance contributions, in order to make sure that Albanian citizens, wherever they live and work, do not lose their pension benefits. An agreement on recognition of social insurance contributions with Switzerland entered into force a day ago, whereas a similar agreement will be ratified with Italy on recognition of the social insurance contributions and pension rights soon, with thousands of Albanian nationals expected to benefit.

Albania and Croatia signed the Cooperation Plan between the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Republic of Albania and the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Albania on Health for 2024-2026.

After the meeting and the ceremony of signing the agreements, Prime Minister Rama and the Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković held a joint press conference.

* * *

Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Plenković: Hello everyone! I would like to once again salute the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, who is on an official visit to the Republic of Croatia upon my invitation and I am very glad that I will have the chance to go on with this part of our conversation during lunch. Our conversation will also continue exactly in two weeks, when I will be visiting Albania again, as Albania will host the Berlin Process Summit, where Prime Minister Rama will be the host, just as he did when he hosted the EU and Western Balkans Summit last December.

We certainly praise such initiatives and such useful meetings aimed at advancing European integration processes.

Prime Minister Edi Rama: Honorable Prime Minister,

Dear Andrej,

First of all, and this is not for the sake of protocol formality, but to sincerely express my satisfaction, I would like to thank you for the hospitality, and for the open and direct dialogue approach, and for the extremely positive spirit of a relationship from which we constantly learn. We do always learn from it, because Croatia is an example of encouragement and inspiration – I wouldn’t overstate it if I were to put it that way – as we progress on the path towards the full-fledged accession to the European Union.

Croatia is an example of success, most recently with joining the eurozone and the Schengen area, and what Croatia has accomplished in one decade after joining the European Union, not only makes us happy, but it definitely encourages us. And I would like to add that such success makes us more demanding so that our friends in Zagreb can help us primarily with their experience that they have accumulated in a process that Croatia launched long before us and in which Croatia has built an impressive edifice of knowledge.

Hence, thanks to the Croatian government assistance, we have already received direct support in the process of the EU accession talks and we would also like to gain as much support as possible on acquiring knowhow about tourism, cyber security, active help in promoting and boosting employment, as well as about handling certain cases, including the current one related to some necessary corrections that we need to deliver on management of the EU funds for agriculture, as Croatia dealt with a similar case not too long ago, and we are very interested in learning about how  the Croatian government addressed this matter structurally.

On the other hand, we touched upon the topic of an important strategic sector, namely the energy sector and the infrastructure, since Albania and Croatia are both part of the same plan on the Adriatic-Ionian Corridor. The Premier informed us that the Croatian government has committed massive funding to support construction of the Croatian part of the Adriatic-Ionian Corridor. I informed Prime Minister Plenković that we too have embarked on the process of signing and finalizing the contracts on construction of the main segments of this Corridor and, of course, we also discussed how to involve Montenegro in this process.

In the meantime, we also discussed concrete ways on establishing a joint working group between the ministries of energy to address the Adriatic-Ionian gas pipeline issue, as time is ripe for us to bring together the potentials, the knowledge, the ideas and come up with a unified offer in terms of investment in this extremely important energy corridor, not only for the region but also for the whole Europe.

And, on the other hand, it is indisputable that together with Croatia we are also members of the Euro-Atlantic community, NATO members and fully align and share same positions regarding the Russian aggression on Ukraine and the imperativeness of the normalization of relations in the region and of a stable region in every aspect. And it is for these reasons that we focused on these topics too, as the Prime Minister already said.

Concluding, I would like to also touch upon the Berlin Process Summit due to be held in mid-October in Tirana, where Prime Minister Plenković will attend, as Croatia is one of the EU member states involved in this Process and Croatia is a staunch supporter of this process, being at the same time an important voice representing our whole region and the need for our voice to be heard more and better in Brussels, because, naturally, not only its position, but also the strategic interests of Croatia are associated and coupled with this very region’s progress. So, being very pleased that the Premier has already confirmed his presence in Tirana and being confident that the Summit will affirm several important new things regarding the region’s further progress on the path towards its accession to the EU, I would like to once again thank Andrej for the hospitality, the readiness to assist Albania with this country’s knowhow, as well as for the friendship and strategic partnership, which is really a very potential partnership and which we deem as one of our most important partnerships for the present and the future.