H.E. Mr. Qirjako Qirko:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation. We feel it is an important contribution and is of particular assistance to our dream of joining the European Union.

Twenty eight years ago, when they changed the regime, the citizens of Albania had one dream, which was to make Albania like the rest of Europe. Now, after 28 years, we are on the eve of realising this, thanks to the assistance and continued support of European Union countries. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Irish Parliament, the President and all parties for the continual and unconditional support which they gave to all of the western Balkan countries in their path towards integration into the European Union.

I refer again to the unconditional support that Ireland has given to my country for integration. We have prepared a paper regarding the development. I will not enter into the details of what we have written. I will just express our view of how important integration into the European Union is for the western Balkans. I give the concrete example of the integration of Albania. Twenty years ago, we had the terrible experience of the collapse of pyramid schemes and the terrible effect of civil war.

However, Albania as a NATO member, an important regional player and the specific role my country is playing in the region shows that the integration of the countries of the region into the EU and into NATO is the best solution for our future. In the last five years at least, this dream of the magnetic force - that we can join the EU one day - has made our leaders more reasonable and more pragmatic to work together. I will give an example. Until five years ago, there were no exchanges of visits between the Presidents or Prime Ministers of Albania and Serbia. The President of Serbia and the Prime Minister of Albania have met each other ten times in the past year.

This is a concrete example of how the atmosphere has changed in the western Balkans. We are working together, our politicians are working together and our peoples are working together. This magnetic positive force called the EU has changed everything. We have some data regarding support for the EU in my country. It is 80% to 90%. However, I honestly do not know about this 10% of people who do not support membership in the EU. Anyway, Albania is a NATO member and is playing its role in the region. We have strongly supported the membership of Montenegro in NATO. We also strongly support the Macedonian membership of NATO because we think that only a region integrated into NATO and the European Union will be a region of peace and stability. We know the bad legacy of the past is there. It is in the past for the moment. Only by working together to build our future and build our institutions will the reality be different for this region.

Albania is doing its own work as a candidate member. Last week, we received a very positive and encouraging message from the Commission. It declared that it will present the decision to open accession talks with Albania to the Council. This is a positive and encouraging message. Last year, Albania made changes to its judiciary and its constitutional system. In the last 25 years, the judiciary had been considered one of the most problematic and corrupt institutions. Thanks to the assistance of the EU and the United States we have built a vetting system to check the wealth of the judges and prosecutors. This system brought some concrete results - some 21 judges are no longer members of this system. An investigation of their unjustified wealth will start. The good news is that the example of Albania and the changes we made in our constitution will be used by other partners and friendly countries in the western Balkans.

We are trying to do our best as a member of NATO. Our forces are in Bosnia and Kosovo. They are also in Afghanistan and Mali and our naval vessels are making a modest contribution to the control of the influx of illegal immigration in the Aegean Sea. We strongly support the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia because we think the only solution for both countries is through negotiations and trying to find a common and acceptable solution for both parts. We appreciate the role of President Aleksandar Vui of Serbia and President Hashim Thaçi of Kosovo in this process. We are encouraging this negotiation. It is the only way to resolve this problem. Kosovo is a reality. More than 120 countries have already recognised it and it is on a path towards EU and Euro-Atlantic integration. I end with these words and hopefully I will be ready and able to answer some questions. Ireland is an inspiring model for a country like us. The chance that Ireland had 25 years ago, we have to have in the near future. We know we have a lot of work to do. However, we know where we would like to arrive. I thank the committee for its attention.