FLASH
Shkruar nga Andi Bushati
Sometimes great tensions are necessary to bring out truths that would otherwise remain dead.
The clash involving Albin Kurti's government with the most important German official for the Balkans is also such a serious, severe and possibly fatal one. Berlin's envoy for our region, Manuel Sarrazin, is persistently asking Kosovo to open the border for free trade of Serbian goods. Germany is accusing the Kurti government of becoming an obstacle to the Berlin Process, of violating the CEFTA agreement, without taking into account the claims of Pristina, which has banned the entry of Serbian goods into its territory for security reasons, since June 2023, with the claim that weapons can also enter with them.
To restore free trade between all Western Balkan countries, Manuel Sarrazin has proven that he is ready to use both the carrot and the stick. He has lured Pristina by promising that in exchange for this concession, the government of Kosovo will be represented by itself in the CEFTA initiative and no longer, as until now, by UMNIK. To this advancement towards recognition, he has added the advantage that the citizens and business of the country would gain from this.
Of course, although in a pre-election situation, the Kurti government must be more flexible to the request coming from Berlin. It should take into account that in recent years Germany has often been on the side of Kosovo and carefully assess the priority it gives to the Berlin Process, not becoming an obstacle to its progress.
Yes, this is another issue that deserves a much deeper and argued debate. In this story, it is interesting to see the German threats, if it happens that Kosovo does not obey. Manuel Sarrazin uttered them during a wild interview on Pristina's public television, RTK. He first warned that, if Kosovo does not say "YES" before the summit to be held in Berlin, in mid-October, other countries will move forward without it and it will pay the financial costs of its decisions.
But, in addition to this, and here is the most beautiful thing, he also issued strong statements that interest us Albanians on this side of the border.
Wanting to convince Pristina at all costs, the German politician said that its participation would finally close the page of the Open Balkans. Terribly concrete and icy, he mentioned that this would be "the last nail in the coffin of "Open Balkan". And then he added the most important phrase that would never have been uttered under normal conditions, without a strong clash and without the current tensions: "The Open Balkans was created to bypass Kosovo".
This is the official position of Berlin: that the Vucic-Rama project was a movement against the rest of our nation. Germany had never spoken so openly and so bluntly. Indeed, we know that she was aligned against this initiative that wanted to bypass the Berlin Process, indeed there are data that confirm that only after German insistence in Washington, Edi Rama was forced to take a step back from the project with the Serbian president, but Gabriel Escobar, Kris Hilli, and Orban's grandmother, Varhelyi, had preached the opposite to us for years. Not to mention what happened in Tirana, where Edi Rama claimed that more than 60% of Albanians gave their heads for the Open Balkans, that if it weren't for him we would have died for bread, during the grain crisis, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, that the Kosovar leaders who refused to join the initiative were short-sighted and harming their country.
Now, thanks to a fierce clash between Berlin and Pristina, together with the threat to Kosovo that, if it did not accept the Berlin Process and CEFTA, it could become a victim of Open Balkan again, we also heard the official German truth, that this dog initiative created against it. This amount is enough to put an end to the debates for and against, for the dangerous adventure in which the government of Albania has been engaged for years.
Lini një Përgjigje