Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today finds us dealing with a report that has been unanimously adopted in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, thus showing that the Members on the Committee took the view that the approach I have proposed in it is the right one. These ladies and gentlemen, though, had the opportunity in January to listen to a number of members of the Albanian parliament address the Committee. They were able to form for themselves a conception of how mature this country and its politicians are. I would rather not repeat what my colleagues said during that debate. Unfortunately, though, I did not get the impression that my colleagues' remarks, and my own, during that debate helped get all the region's politicians at last to realise that they, whether in government or opposition, actually had to engage in politics for the sake of the whole of the Albanian people! So I have already come to the conclusion that here we are submitting a report that is somewhat stringent, not stringent out of any lack of affection for the Albanian people, but because we perhaps care more for them than do some politicians in that country, who are less concerned with the well-being of the people than with their own pockets and their own positions. I say this because I know the people there and because I also know their politicians, and so I do think that, rather than beat about the bush, we should actually say out loud that, last year, elections were held. They were rigged. We then allowed them not to be repeated, but then – as the election had been rigged to bring about a sufficient majority in the parliament, which was to elect the president in June – asked for the presidential election, at least, not to be held, but for politicians instead to unite and try to find a figure who could then be a president for all Albanians, rather than an Albanian president who owed his position to a stolen majority. I am therefore very grateful that Members have followed me on points 4 and 5, in which we asked the Albanians, before the Commission resumes negotiations with them, to at least comply with all the requirements of the OSCE/ODIHR election observers' committee, allowing that committee to begin its work in the parliament, checking that new electoral legislation is also set in motion and that the political forces should give some consideration to who, in Albania, can lead that country in such a way as to unite it. Now there are many who say that the opening of negotiations of course means that everything can be monitored much better. That I do not believe! We go there more than we do anywhere else. Albania is the only country in the world for which there is a friendship association in which states and organisations join together and meet several times a year in order to help the country – and what has been the result? I know that Albania has had a worse fate to endure than any other country in Europe. We know that. Hoxha was no Tito, nor was he a Honecker. Hoxha was Hoxha and he was appalling. But Albania has now for some time been free of Hoxha, and so we could have expected things to get a bit better. There are no end of things to do, though. Albania does not do what it has to do because it has to draw closer to Europe. Albania has to do these things out of the desire to be a proper democracy, because it wants the best for its citizens, and for that it needs decent jurisprudence, administrative practice and people to be enabled to have the property of which they were dispossessed restored to them, for which a proper infrastructure is required. Albania also needs all these things in order to attract investors. It needs the confidence of foreign investors, and for that it needs good policies. I take the view that the Council would be well advised to seek advice from us, as it is we who will, at the end of the day, have to approve the Agreement. I believe that the Commission's thinking is basically along the same lines as our own – that we should not make a start until the Albanian politicians have, in some way, demonstrated their willingness to take a step forwards. Then we will at once be ready to seek negotiations with them in which all the things they now have to work on will be sorted out. Let me remind you that we go there several times each year and are trying everything to help Albania, and that what we are saying today is intended simply to help them rather than being directed against the people. That is why I am very grateful that our vote in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy was unanimous. I would be delighted if our vote tomorrow were to be so as well.

Political group: PPE-DE