The sixth summit of the European Political Community formally opened its first plenary session today, gathering European leaders following the official welcoming ceremony and family photo. The leaders convened at the “House of Europe,” a venue purposefully constructed in Skanderbeg Square and artistically adorned with drawings by Albanian children – transforming it into a powerful emblem of unity and hope for “a new Europe in a new world.”

The first opening session centered on the themes of European security and democratic resilience, addressing both pressing immediate priorities – notably, continued support for Ukraine in its pursuit of a just and lasting peace – as well as long-term strategic challenges. These include safeguarding democratic institutions from foreign interference and reinforcing Europe’s collective defense capabilities.

Prime Minister Rama chaired the proceedings of the plenary session, where he initially addressed the assembly with a welcoming speech.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama:

It is truly an immense honor for all my country, for all the Albanian people, to welcome you all to this country and to this purposefully constructed house for the European political community in Tirana, where you are not surrounded by the nightmare of Europa in renaissance paintings nor by the emptiness of a temporary gathering space.

You are surrounded by Albanian children’s imagination of Europe. This was an obvious choice for us because children’s dreams are never held hostage by the myths of the past. They are instead about imagining the future, very similar by the way to the dream of Europe’s founding fathers.

And you have landed at a particularly poignant moment in this country, where we have learned to view the past through the eyes of the future and no longer to look at the future through the eyes of the past.

Your arrival follows an election campaign in which Europe featured more than ever before, not as a divisive issue, but as a joint claim to identity, not as a list of policies, but as a deep yearning for belonging, not as a set of homework assignments, but as a shared destiny. That is why it is so gratifying that the campaign centered on those keywords, Europe, identity, belonging and destiny, won over 52% of the vote. For my dear friend Keir, it was a result very similar to the Brexit referendum, but with the roles reversed, 52% for remain, or in our case, unite.

Where it was incomparable, however, is the remaining 48% of the voters. They are not Euro-sceptics. No, they are just ill-informed Euro-optimists, who think I should have been fired for not having succeeded in uniting Albania with the EU long ago. But this is not my point. The idea of a united Europe is paradoxically both ancient and ever new. One of its earliest champions was a Frenchman in the 18th century, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre. In the ashes of the Treaty of Utrecht, after years of war, he envisioned a union of European states, a bold, idealistic vision of perpetual peace. His project even included cooperation with Russia, as well as with the Balkan and Mediterranean states, then under Ottoman rule.

So, I guess that for the visionary Abbé, today’s Türkiye would also be an indispensable partner in a union of perpetual peace. But the project failed, of course. It was killed by light interests and petty caprices, as Voltaire would put it, and swallowed by the fear that has long held Europe hostage. Even today, the myth of Europa persists, and the resemblance to the Europe gathered here today is striking.

The dream of perpetual peace has been replaced by the nightmare of perpetual war. Instead of the bells of peace, we hear the drums of war. There is a palpable sense of shortness of breath as we confront the forces threatening Europe’s very foundations. External aggression, internal fragmentation, the ghosts of imperial myths, shifting geopolitical alliances, the instability of global trade, and the deep, very deep difficulty of so many to believe in a new Europe for the new times.

I believe that there is no better moment than this one to remind us that while we rightfully think about a Europe of resistance, defense, and new military capabilities, we must not forget the other Europe, the Europe of enlightenment, human reason, and the quest for perpetual peace, not just among ourselves, but even with our enemies. That Europe, which at a certain point gave birth to the most improbable political project in human history, the European Union, taught us that even former mortal enemies could come together, their wounds still fresh from the battle, and create a bond for life.

They turned old rivers of blood into new avenues of peace, agreeing that conflict could only be tamed through commerce, that free trade is essential to free minds, and that security comes not from increasing threats, but from expanding rights and equal opportunities.

It was that Europe that taught us that in the midst of the most horrific conflicts, we must maintain some faith in the humanity of our enemies. Otherwise, as Immanuel Kant reminds us, ‘’when hostilities degenerate into war of extermination, all justice is destroyed, and perpetual peace becomes the burial ground of humankind’’.

The enemies of peace should not drag us into the glorification of weapons. Here in the Balkans, we have survived war, bombs, territorial conflicts, destruction, and disruption. It happened in our lifetimes, not in some distant black-and-white documentary archive. And we have learned that peace has no competitors. Perhaps, that is why hope in that other Europe is greatest here.

The most Euro-optimistic among all of us gathered today in this house live not in Paris or in Berlin, but in Tirana and Podgorica. Their belief in the European ideal runs deep. We have survived economic collapse; we have survived migration and displacement; we have survived fake news even before the term was coined and we have learned that cooperation has no losers. Perhaps that is why we believe that Europe remains the most fertile ground to turn the darker currents of history into shining paths of the future.

Europe for us is as much a shared spiritual space as it is a mosaic of many different regions, languages, and religions. Perhaps that is why we feel the need, not just for new policies, but for a new kind of politics, one that redefines not only who we are, but how we are together among us and with the world.

One that sees Europe not as a fortress to defend, nor as a museum to preserve, but as a shared soul to be protected, a shared destiny to be lived, and a shared future to be built. To do that, we must not only invest in defense and resilience, but in the hearts and minds that will carry forward Europe’s soul, Europe’s destiny, and Europe’s future.

And let me ask you, my very dear friends, why not imagine an EPC of education, of science and artificial intelligence, a transnational alliance beyond weaponry, a terrain of interconnected sources of knowledge, research and innovation, where non-EU or not-yet-EU territories can become new frontiers for investments, free from bureaucracy, regulations and fiscal burdens.

A revival of what followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Western Europe discovered its eastern half, and investments flowed eastward, drawing the newcomers into the embrace of a free Europe and ushering the last sustained era of growth, of real growth in the old Europe, where high dividends returned from the investments in the new frontier.

Let’s give Europe’s young people and start-uppers a better reason to stay than just talking about weapons and rearming. And let’s give them a strong motivation to build and to dream on European soil, instead of looking and going far away to follow their dreams.

Our struggle cannot be solely about resisting what others might do to us. It must also be about what we must do for ourselves, our children and our Europe. It’s not just about resisting destruction – this goes without saying – but it’s about daring to build, to revive the wisdom of our history and to strengthen the faith in our own human reason capabilities.

When Donald Trump says that God saved him from the bullet because the Almighty had a plan for America, he tells only half of the truth. The other half is that God had a plan for Europe too. And it could not be more obvious. Europe, once again, has a God-given opportunity to reinvent itself.

Let us ensure that Europe’s journey – ours in this case – is not one of abduction, as in the painting of Veronese, but of return and renaissance. Return home, to a home filled with dreams of the future, free from myths of the past, by no doubt very well protected, but by no doubt resembling not the shape of weapons but the imagination of both our children and our founding fathers, to a vision that is ours to make real.

Thank you very much.