Highly appreciated and distinguished participants to:

European Leadership Conference – Focuses on Balkans Tirana International Hotel, Tirana, Albania, 21. – 22. November 2015

Honored speakers: Dr. Todor MIRKOVIĆ

Senior Advisor, European Center for Peace and Development, Serbia Mr. Theodosios GEORGIOU

Founder and Chairman, Greek Association for Atlantic & European Cooperation (GAAEC), Greece

Prof. Dr. Arben MALAJFormer Minister of Finance and Economy; Chairman, UPF National Peace Council, Albania

Hon. Mićo ORLANDIĆMember of Parliament, Montenegro

Prof. Anis BAJRAKTAREVIĆChairman, International Law and Global Political Studies, IMC University, Austria

It is with no small amount of discreetness that I take my place as a moderator, and face this learned audience.

To us, Peace Loving citizens, the experience of receiving instruction from the living voice, as well as from the books, of World scholars, is very familiar.

It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The inverse tendency, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we have not yet acquired, mainly by deed, as we travelled far away the timely distant past of good neighborhood and development in peace; and in him who first makes the endeavor it begets a certain sense of due apology for so presumptuous an act.

I am convinced it will remain the same until, We the people from Balkans will accept each other truly for what we are and learn how to live for the sake of each other.

As regards the manner in which I shall have to administer this agency, I am neither a security specialist, nor a scholar learned in the history of Balkan Wars, nor an anthropologist.Peacemaking and Development is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed.

To the peace-making person the religious, ethnic and ideological inclinations of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution of individual realm.

By the other side, Institutional and Environmental contexts compose a strong part in our collective behavior and orientation.

So many times, extremely inherent influence came from power centers far away from our countries. We, all, paid a heavy toll to a dark and ugly political paradigm started in the 19th century and extended to the Balkans by means of general violence and bloodshed, ideologically promoted through ethnic and religious supremacy. All around one can find some insistence to continue in that path. We stand firmly against it!

Albanians suffered the longest in that trans-ethnical, religiously conditioned, reformatting of Balkan People and Lands in newly established States unrightfully considered and legitimated nation-states!

The question, What are the ideological, religious and ethnic propensities? and the question, What is their philosophic significance influencing the development of the Institutional Framework? are two significant questions from the peacemaking point of view; and, as a failure to recognize this fact accordingly may breed confusion, I wish to insist upon the point a little before we enter into the discussions.

In the matter of religions, it is particularly easy to distinguish the order of question. Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents. A definition has been broadly accepted: True believers go beyond the boundaries of their own religion/nation!

In the matter of ethnicity, one finds a lot more intrinsic influences derived from a root condition of ethical principles and LANGUAGE.

These are strikingly questions of historical fact, and one has to see how the answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: how it could serve to us as a guide to life in peace and development in cooperation. That coziness of neglecting historical facts, without trying to understand some substantial lessons, resulted in a potential capacitor for future human tragedies.

To find a working answer to the question we must apply some sort of a universal principle of peace and development, broadly accepted, making it a proxy for Balkan Integration.

Armed violence and insecurity have had a destructive impact on our countries development, resulting in long standing grievances among ethnic/religious communities that last for generations, because of the loss of dear ones from families all around the Balkans. Sexual violence, crime, homicide and torture encouraged chaos, just blind hatred and war profiting. Smuggling, trafficking and corruption erupted! Bad governance followed. Bad governance based on material endless greed, without judging of means, just greed! Environmental protection and preservation went out of order. It triggered poverty, displacement, unemployment, associated by deep resentment that steals the joy of living from everyone!We witnessed the proposed failure prompting and havoc causing “Zero Level Economy” and “Democracy through Devolution” models’ experimental application.

Later on, we have seen individuals, from the Balkan conflict times; export their paramilitary services in Ukraine and Middle East! It induced brain drain and brought human and institutional capacities to decrease as WB warns us. Idiocracy became lucrative!There are singers (Bayaga i Konstruktori/SRB – Ovo je Balkan) who remind us that in Balkans, every 50 years on, a war starts, or state ministers who like to play “Indians and Cowboys”(The Minister of Interiors of FYROM) in Balkan version.

We have to go to the root of it! We have to eradicate it! It is not an easy task due to the happenings from recent decades. It is not a task for Albanians, Bosnians, Croatians, Greeks, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbians alone; it is a major task for all of us working together to distinguish and apply the same principles of behavior toward the other.

Reciprocity will make it instrumental!

World leaders, gathered on 25 September 2015, at the United Nations in New York adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It sounds like a providential call, without the direct manifestation of the providence itself.

We have been nurtured with the idea that each of our nations is a historic nation competing for supremacy. In time, each of Balkan nations hailed its own period of glory and myth, evoking an idyllic past, not so true, and now we face the question: Are we going to remain only strongly historic, or are we going to become providential? All of us, together!

The road to development goes from FEAR to FAITH. That faith needs to become the security trust, beyond the borders, security for all the generations. We should consider character education a pillar for the incoming peace and justice we long for. Let us find how to consider those borders as ours in common, the freedom as ours in common, the wellbeing of people as ours in common!

We have a saying in Albanian: “The brave kills, the noble forgives the repented ones”.

May God assist us to bring good harvest to this conference for the sake of generations to come!