00:00Now it's an honor, on behalf of the people of the Protectorate of Albania, to give the floor to the
00:08Italian Prime Minister and Protector of our country, Giorgia Melone.
00:15Dear colleagues, good morning everyone, and let me say thanks to Eddie, not for being a Protectorate, but for his
00:26warm hospitality and the summit, and also for making me feel very young again with that video he showed in
00:35the inauguration.
00:39And I want also to congratulate Eddie for his absolutely unexpected re-election as a leader here of the Albanian
00:51government.
00:52I'm happy that Europe will continue to count on his spirit and his determination.
01:00Albania is hosting the European political community for the first time.
01:03I value it as particularly significant, not only for this nation, but for all of us.
01:14I have always considered the European identity as fact, established by history even before geography.
01:23A concept harder to enclose in a definition than to understand by impulse.
01:32Albania is, of course, Europe, just like Italy or Serbia or Norway, regardless of whether they are part of this
01:42or that organization.
01:43That is why it always makes me smile when someone attempts to claim the right to decide who is European
01:51and who is not.
01:53Among the states that are around this table today, several have decided not to join the EU.
02:01Others are inspired to be part of it.
02:03But both are no less European than the 27 EU member states.
02:09Yet the EU is today the soundest common home to achieve what I like to call the European reunification
02:18attained amongst people who may differ from one another.
02:23And yet they are a part of one who, like the different fingers of a hand.
02:29Peoples who have fought each other over the centuries yet are in reality one single people.
02:38Also for this reason, being here today means taking a step forward in the historic process of reunifying Europe.
02:45Because if we really want to build a new Europe in a new world, we cannot imagine doing so without
02:52the Western Balkans,
02:54without their peoples, without their identities and historical backgrounds.
02:58Western Balkans do not lie on Europe's finger or beyond our continent.
03:04They are in the very heart of our continent.
03:07They are the bridge region between the East and the West,
03:10between what St. John Paul II like to call the two lungs of Europe.
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