Angela Merkel doesn’t need all the translators that small Albania offered her these last few hours. Her words during a press conference transmitted live by the majority of the media are as clear as the attempts of several people to find between the lines things that don’t exist.
That we are not ready to become an integral part of the European Union we all know very well and I don’t think that a declaration is necessary, even if from the strong woman of Berlin. Even if we’re not talking about five, seven, or even twenty conditions.
Because for us who live in this country it is ridiculous to wait for a woman from the top of Berlin to say there is corruption here, that there are big problems with the juridical system, that we should be careful with the elections, etc., etc. And it becomes even more ridiculous when the parties that hold responsibility for this situation debate about the way in which Merkel was translated or positioned when she read her declaration about Albania.
This because even after more than twenty years in a system that pretends to be open and democratic, the politicians behave as in a dictatorship. They lie and find imaginary enemies to blame for their own failures, they hold historic speeches and ridicule their predecessors, even though they are shockingly similar.
Because they find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Albania in the state it is in today actually doesn’t deserve to be a part of the European Union. And for this there is no need to convince any German deputy or EU official, but only the powerful Merkel.
We who live in this country every day know very well that justice, reforms, vetting, are slogans to make us understand that we have been captured by corruption. For any Albanian that is able to look only once into a Western hospital or school, it is clear that the hospitals and schools in their country are lightyears away from that standard. So it is a waste of energy to translate foreign politician for the things we did to ourselves.
We all know that we are still far away, we all know that the standards required of and maintained by an EU member state have no relation whatsoever to the way in which we have managed the state for these last twenty-five years.
So whoever tries to explain us that the conditions are there but that the foreigners don’t see them either doesn’t see or doesn’t hear, or is so far removed from reality that he needs to hear in German the words that in Albanian would hurt his ears: insufficient standards!
