“Suspended” relations with the EP

“The inter-parliament meetings have been suspended. This means that the planned inter-parliamentary meeting for the last year was cancelled by request of our Albanian colleagues. Now with the electoral campaign we have only informal communications. For this reason I thought it would be better to participate in the conference that is organized this Monday in Tirana, to bring there the European Parliament flag and talk about the inter-parliamentary cooperation. We are waiting for the elections and the new Parliament. I hope that the cooperation will be intensive, in order to compensate the time we lost”, declared Eduard Kukan, chairman of the European Parliament Delegation for Balkan.

The last meeting was held last summer. The meeting of October was postponed to December and April. Now it seems that there will be only one meeting by the end of 2013. Two inter-parliamentary meetings were lost. Who is responsible for this?

“The responsibility goes to the situation in Albania, not us. We accepted the explanations of our Albanian colleagues during the electoral campaign, because the Albanian delegation was not willing to cooperate, since the members are engaged in the campaign and this is understandable. This is an objective situation that stopped us and we understood our Albanian colleagues who explained us that the meetings during the campaign would have been misused for electoral purposes. It is understandable, since everyone tried to attract more attention during a campaign, and the inter-parliamentary meetings would not serve to the goal for which they are created.

Keeping in mind all the efforts made by the European Parliament to help Albania, did you expect the boycott of the Democratic Party, member of your political family, the EPP, in the conference of Tirana, where you participated with Commissioner Fule?

“I respect the decision of the Democratic Party. It was a conference for the civil society”.

What happens if Albania will fail even this time with the elections?

“This is a negative speculation and I refuse to answer. I hope that they will behave responsibly, because the European Integration is about rules, values and the good behaviour of politicians and political parties.

Are you aware of the constant attacks that the government has undertaken against Top Channel and the free media? How do you see the recent attack, before the elections?

Media freedom is a very important European value. We pay a lot of attention to these matters and see at what point the media freedom has been respected.

Prepared by: Arta Tozaj

Top Channel