Brussels – Double public appearance in Tirana today (13 October) for Ursula von der Leyen. In the morning, the Commission President held a bilateral meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, praising him for the Balkan country’s progress towards EU accession. In the afternoon, she then met with regional and European businessmen to encourage investment in the region, which is increasingly integrated into the twelve-star single market.
“My first message is very clear,” said the head of the Berlaymont at the end of the face-to-face meeting with the Social Democrat premier: “Albania is on the right path towards the European Union,” she said, complimenting the “extraordinary and exceptional acceleration” registered in the last “three or four years” at the level of pre-accession reforms.
Glad to begin my annual tour of the Western Balkans in Tirana.
Albania is on the right track towards the EU.
With record-speed acceleration in the past three years.
We are ready to support you every step of the way. pic.twitter.com/tLX6Ndh369
– Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) October 13, 2025
Tirana is running fast towards joining the European club, and so far five clusters of negotiating chapters out of a total of six have been opened. “We expect to open the last one this autumn,” said von der Leyen, welcoming the commitment of Rama and his government to “close the negotiations by 2027.” It is “an ambitious goal,” she acknowledges, but a feasible one. After all, she recalls, Albania is already fully aligned with EU foreign policy, unlike, for example, the Serbia of Aleksandar Vućič.
Rama himself, answering questions from reporters, defended this ambitious goal. “We went through some difficult moments” in past years due to obstructionism by some member states, the premier said, but now “we are experiencing a new reality in relations” between Tirana and Brussels, even a “total alignment.”
“For our part, we have to complete all our tasks in order to succeed,” he explains: “Every task that is successfully completed,” he says, “makes Albania stronger and much more functional.” To the point that, he argues, the entire negotiation process “is for us a democratic state-building process.”
But it does not end there. “Getting closer (to the EU, ed) is not only a matter of geopolitics,” von der Leyen continued, but “it is also a smart business move.” Brussels allocated €6 billion to the region as part of the Western Balkans Growth Plan, an instrument specifically dedicated to driving the economic development of the countries in the area in return for the implementation of pre-accession reforms.
“The doors of our single market are open to your companies, and our companies get a wider common market,” von der Leyen explains. And she announces that a new cheque for almost €100 million is about to be drawn for Tirana. “Now it is a matter of moving on to the implementation phase,” she notes: to implement all the reforms and access the disbursement of the remaining funds of the Plan, worth a total of “almost a billion.” Albanian citizens are already benefiting from the country’s inclusion in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and will soon benefit from European roaming for mobile internet browsing.
Of economics, specifically, von der Leyen spoke in her second appearance today. “All the countries that have joined our Union have experienced incredible economic growth,” she said, addressing the audience of entrepreneurs and investors from the countries of the region and the Twenty-Seven, gathered for the first EU-Western Balkans Investment Forum. And so will the states in the area, she promises: “I am not talking about the distant future,” she assures, but about the “next decade.”
The mechanism is clear: “Together with reforms come investments,” she explains, as companies will know they can operate on a level playing field and free competition.
Von der Leyen confirms that the trade agreements signed today (around ten) and those under discussion tomorrow (another 24) “could bring over €4 billion in new investment to the region,” acting as a driving force to double regional GDP between now and 2035.
Above all, she continued, “with these projects we are bringing the Western Balkans into the industrial policy of our Union.” For example, regarding artificial intelligence (Brussels wants to build “AI factories” in North Macedonia and Serbia) and clean energy (the Western Balkans are to become hubs of production, storage, and transport, forming a “new energy backbone” for the Old Continent). “If you choose the Western Balkans, you choose Europe,” von der Leyen concluded. The near future will tell whether his appeal will be heeded.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
