Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Address Following the Kanye West Concert

Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered the following address on July 12, 2026, in a video statement published on his social media channels, one day after the Kanye West concert held at Eagle Stadium in Tirana before some 60,000 attendees from more than 80 countries. The address responds to criticism of the government’s decision to commit 4.3 million euros in public funds to secure the event, and to the ongoing protest movement. 

Last night Albania did not simply organize a concert. Albania organized an event which, thanks to social channels and the global fame of its protagonist, became news in every corner of the world. But in Albania, as usual, and this time even more than usual, the reason is known: the event became a new motive for very fierce division, where a fury of violence and madness was unleashed against a concert.

It has been a lifetime that every time I have tried to do something beautiful, something different, something new through public projects, I have heard the same refrain: “The people have no bread,” “we do not need facades,” “pensioners are dying,” “they will not eat the tiles,” “poverty is at its peak,” “we do not want concerts.” And after the cry of opposition the absurd calculations always begin: “With this much money,” “this one would take this much,” “that one would take that much,” and so on, and so on, and so on.

At first glance this approach seems to feed debate, and the demagogues who fill the screens of social channels with their embittered faces for the people seem to be saying something that makes sense. But in truth, beyond their hypocrisy, which is dizzying, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a country develops and how an economy grows. Because development is not a loaf of bread of fixed size, where every euro allocated to a concert is taken from a pensioner, taken from a sick person or taken from a pupil. Development is the ability to make the loaf bigger, so that when it is divided there is more for everyone.

And time has shown this ever since the Urban Renaissance, which changed the energy of the cities and created a chain reaction of very positive developments, where from colors we moved to form, and from form a new developmental chain was created. Consumption grew, incomes grew, investments grew, employment grew and, of course, the economy grew together with expectations. Therefore the most important question is not simply how much it costs, but how much value it creates. An expenditure ends the moment it is made, while an investment continues to produce value even after it is made.

A grand concert does not leave behind only a beautiful mark in the memory of those who enjoyed it. It leaves money in the tills of full hotels, of packed restaurants, of cafes, of shops, of the enterprises that handle transport, security, technical work and logistics, and of course of all those who become part of its organization. It creates profits for business, it creates work for the people engaged, and at the same time it collects revenue for the state through taxes on that added value, along with millions of eyes turned toward Albania.

It shows the world that this is a country where, even when there are protests, there is hospitality, there is security, and great events can be organized with passion and professionalism. A free, democratic country, where you need have no hesitation to come, to vacation, to return, and to think about investing. Imagine how this message reached those foreigners who have booked to come in the weeks of the coming month and who, meanwhile, were considering canceling their vacation reservations because of the protest, as happened in June, when, after a fantastic May, arrivals fell, striking, in fact, the economy of the many families who live from tourism. And now imagine what negative impact the cancellation of the biggest concert Albania has ever organized would have had.

And not only for tourism, but also for foreign investors, because foreign investment does not simply go where there are favorable laws and competitive taxes. It goes, first of all, where there is trust, where there is energy, where there is reputation, where there is ambition, where there is security, without question, and where there is a society that believes in its own future and has the courage every day to look at that future with new eyes.

No one invests in a country that is afraid of itself. Capital follows, first of all, trust; then, of course, it also does the arithmetic of profit. Cities like Vienna, London, Paris or Singapore solved the dilemmas of “dividing the bread of development” long ago, becoming leaders of industry, culture, sport and entertainment. They compete to bring the biggest artists and events in the world, because they have understood, tested and proven long since that the right question is not how much a cultural activity costs, but how much economy it generates. How many tourists, which is to say consumers, it attracts. How many investments it inspires and how much prestige it builds.

Today’s Albania should not ask only: “How much does it cost?” Today’s Albania, which aims for the champions league of Mediterranean tourism, must ask without fail: “How much value does this investment create?” And do not forget that there is a poverty far greater and far more dangerous for a country than the lack of sufficient income: the poverty of aspirations, for a country and for anyone. Whoever is poor in aspirations is condemned to remain far behind the possibilities they truly have, as a country or as an individual. Whoever sees every bold idea as rash and whoever sees every success as suspect does not fight poverty, but only feeds it. Poverty is not fought by not holding concerts, but by holding concerts too, because a country can never become rich by thinking only of the stomach and not also of the soul.

Wellbeing grows by creating value, by attracting capital, ideas and people, and, above all, by being a protagonist, not a passive spectator, in the world we live in. Pensions are not paid by pessimism. Hospitals are not built by rejecting every great initiative. Wellbeing is not born from the shrinking of dreams; it is born from the courage to look further, to aim higher and to create more value, always having the courage to dare more.

And now, two words about the 4 million euros and about those who pretend not to understand while pouring poison, poison, poison without pause into people’s ears, from pensioners to the very youngest. They must be exposed before the fact that, yes, those 4 million euros were an investment. Yes, they were an investment made at the last minute to save the far greater investment for Albania, for the economy of Tirana and for the thousands of people from more than 80 countries of the world who had bought their tickets to come here, and, above all, an investment made so as not to open a new wound of distrust toward an Albania on which all eyes now rest, an Albania that must keep the word by which it guarantees every international event and guarantees the foreign citizens who come to this country.

But the truth of the 4 million is even fuller than that. It is fuller beyond anything we do, because those 4 million euros would never have left the state coffers had it not been for the threats, the blackmail, the campaign of bullying and the violent hysteria of social networks, where a minority of people believes it can impose itself through verbal terror on an entire country, on the government, on enterprises and on anyone who does not think like those who embody that minority. How can this be allowed? How can this be allowed in a democratic country? Put a qeleshe on your head or tie a flag around your neck and take Albania hostage in the name of the people. While the people, as is well known, speak with the vote, not with insults, not with threats, not with violence and blackmail through the mouths of a few spokesmen who, in the best case, are ignorant loudmouths and, in the worst case, are captured adventurers. Yes, yes, captured. So if those 4 million pain them, and whoever follows behind them, let them first demand an accounting from themselves for the climate of violence they have fed through the social channels, because the 4 million euros from the state coffers were not drawn out by the concert. They were drawn out by the assault, by the blind aggression to destroy the concert.

Protests are a source of energy for democracy, and respect for the institution of protest is something I personally and this governing majority have demonstrated from day one, and we will demonstrate it always. But there is no chance that we will accept submission to violence, threats, blackmail or lynching choruses that recall the medieval squares with their exalted crowds delighting in the spectacle of lynching and death.

Likewise, there is no possibility that I personally will accept the idea that, in the Albania of 2026, citizens must fall silent, artists must withdraw, and enterprises must pay tribute to a mob of online abusers who, in their blindness, and with the support of a great many fake profiles, recall the red guards, the guardsmen of the cultural revolution in China.

One more important thing in closing. Flocks of crows and magpies are being deployed to accuse me of attacking the people who have supposedly come out to the square, of insulting the youth that has supposedly awakened, of accusing the emigrants who are supposedly demanding an accounting, and so on, and so on, and so on. But no, no! Absolutely not! From the very beginning, and every time I have spoken, I have made the distinction between the day of the flamingo and the night of the raven and the crow. I have never prejudged those citizens who came out to protest peacefully, with the conviction that they want a better Albania. All those young men and women who came out to protest with the conviction that they want a better protected environment, those families who came out to protest for higher quality healthcare, those parents who came out to protest because they want a better education, those men and women who came out because they want a more humane administration. And I can never prejudge people in general who want a more just state in its entirety. Because I want exactly the same things.

When a country advances, people’s expectations grow faster than the pace of progress itself. Better roads make the remaining potholes more unbearable. The frontal war on corruption, which has never happened before, makes corruption even more unbearable. Services faster than ever before, 95 percent of them online, make every backward service even more intolerable. This is not a sign of failure; it is the clearest, surest, most meaningful sign that society is asking for ever more, and our duty is not to lower the expectations of citizens, nor to treat their dissatisfaction as opposition to us, but to narrow, every day, the gap between what we have achieved and what they rightly expect of us.

That is why we are listening with great attention. A group set up expressly in the first days is gathering every concern, and we are working to build a reflection on our shortcomings, our mistakes and our gaps. And then, of course, step by step, we will communicate them to all the ordinary and honest people of this country who ask that our journey toward the European home be faster, and that Albania become sooner what they want, and not only want: what they deserve.