On July 29, 1913, the decision of the Conference of Ambassadors in London resulted in the “de jure” recognition of the Albanian state. This act constitutes the fundamental international document of the creation of the Albanian state and the recognition of the supervised independence of Albania by the six Great Powers of the time: Austria-Hungary, Italy, Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany. This act was attached to the internal act of independence of Albania, proclaimed on November 28, 1912. With this decision, the Conference of Ambassadors in London changed its decision of December 17, 1912, where Albania was recognized as “Autonomy guaranteed and controlled exclusively by the six Powers under the sovereignty or suzerainty of the Sultan” and decided to form Albania “as an autonomous, sovereign principality… under the guarantee of the six Powers”.

In jurisprudence, de jure recognition means a stable, complete and final recognition. Although this decision of this conference did not recognize the independent Albanian state proclaimed in the Vlora Assembly by the Fathers of the modern Albanian nation, but a state reduced to almost half of its territories, it is still important because it opened the first path towards the recognition of the rights of the Albanian nation.

The Great Powers had reservations regarding the future status of the Albanian state. They recognized it as a subject of international law, admitted it into the community of states of the time and established diplomatic relations, but imposed on it a series of obligations and conditions not only to ensure its ability to move towards a political future, but also to keep it under international legal institutional control and supervision.

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The newly formed Albanian state was placed under the rule of a prince selected by the Great Powers and it was these powers, through the International Control Commission, that would direct, supervise, and care for the new state for a period of ten years. This international institution, in cooperation with the power given to the prince, as head of state and at the same time the embodiment of executive power (which he exercised through the prime minister), would constitute the highest political decision-making authority in the Principality of Albania.

There were six Great Powers, those who guaranteed the status, integrity and neutrality of the new state, a task that they in fact failed to fulfill, due to a series of international circumstances and internal Albanian reasons. Also, the Great Powers reserved for themselves the right to establish state structures and organize life, political, economic, social activity, domestic and foreign policy, the construction of the army, gendarmerie, the drafting and approval of the constitution, Provisional Statute, etc., of independent Albania, turning its independence into a fictitious one.

These restrictions were asphyxiating for the sovereign attributes, specific and necessary for an independent state and subject to international law. The de jure recognition of the Albanian state coincided with the efforts of the Great Powers of the time to find a compromise between the participating states and to geopolitically stabilize the Balkans, troubled by wars. The Conference of Ambassadors needed more than eight months of discussions, to decide on the projects and to make the necessary adjustments! The difficulty was that the basic projects were very far from each other and compromise was quite difficult.

This conference was so difficult that to this day we remember as special what all the historical figures who would deal with the administration of Albania did. Even the European powers themselves had a very difficult time. Among them, we remember the Swedes who immediately withdrew from the administration to leave the burden of administration to the Dutch gendarmerie. The American minister in Greece at the time would call this plan “a miracle of incompetence”, “an absolutely incompatible scheme”, “a tangle of unstable things”.

Faced with these difficulties, the London Conference postponed the final decision on the status of Albania from one meeting to another, without reaching a final decision. The evolution of events on the ground affected the changes and shifts of the initial positions and especially in the spring of 1913, the problem of status took on new perspectives. On May 30, 1913, at the Conference of Ambassadors in London, the Peace Treaty was signed, which for the Albanian issue is the second important act after the decision of December 17, 1912.

With this treaty, the Ottoman Empire was forced to give up its sovereign rights over Albania, the Balkan states were discouraged from continuing further divisive activity over Albanian lands, since now it would be the six Great Powers that would decide on all issues related to the status of Albania, its internal organization and the definition of borders. This treaty was the first international act that expressed the idea of ​​a separate Albanian state, although in a still undefined form.

The Albanian question was defined under the prism of avoiding a confrontation between Austria-Hungary and Russia. Austria-Hungary found itself faced with the fait accompli of changing the Balkan status quo to its detriment and to the benefit of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, behind which stood, ultimately, Russia. To compensate for this, the dualist empire with the uncertain support of Italy, decided to put into practice the long-standing plan for the creation of an autonomous (later independent) Albanian state, which should have borders as “large as possible”.

The treatment of the border problem of the new Albanian state was not based on ethnographic, historical, economic, etc. considerations, but was done by the Great Powers under the prism of not disrupting the “European Concert”. Serbia’s right over Kosovo (claimed even today when Kosovo has been legally and factually separated from Serbia) and Greece’s right over Chameria and other Albanian territories in the southeast, were the result of the acquisition of these territories as spoils of war and internationally sanctioned by an institution, which at the core of its work at that time did not have today’s basic democratic principles that regulate international relations.

The activity of the Balkan states and the Great Powers in the realization of this decision was aided by the situation in which Albanian society at that time found itself. The five-century Ottoman occupation had preserved medieval conservatism and the ruralization of society. Albania suffered from the lack of an emancipated social grouping, it suffered from the existence of a class of beylers who had a poorly developed sense of national responsibility and were still haunted by the ghosts of preserving donated personal fiefdoms.

The emancipated liberal and pro-European forces of Albanian society were a minority almost powerless to undertake initiatives that broke the conservative taboos of a society newly born in freedom. This fragile freedom, accompanied by significant territorial cuts, sanctioned by international agreements, and followed step by step by the unbridled thirst of predatory neighbors, had disoriented the progressive direction of this society, had left it idle and unprotected by the adventurers who at that time (and why not, even later), were in the majority.

The Albanian issue was resolved without the slightest respect for the Albanians and the border of the new Albanian state was determined only under the prism of avoiding a confrontation between Austria-Hungary and Russia, for which the Albanians were not guilty and had nothing to do with it. The attitude of the Great Powers of that time was criminal, that instead of opening the vital pores to a nation on its path to civic and national renewal, they truncated it territorially, severed its vital arteries and nurtured the factors that make a people historically hindered in its path of development easily manipulable and controllable.

It was these historical injustices, which would bring conflicts, blood, resentment, violence and tears until the beginning of the 21st century, that forced Bishop Gjergj Fishta to accuse: “Ugh! Europe, you whore of the weather!/ That you deny the new, the faith of God!/ Yes, is this the saint of citizenship?/ With the land of Albania/ among the clichés of Russia”. But as a proverb says “righteousness delays, but it does not forget”. It was the end of the 20th century that had to come, when the geopolitical situation of Southeast Europe changed.

The democratization of this part of Europe enabled not only the liberation of Albania from the communist dictatorship, but also the creation of a new entity in the Balkans, the “Republic of Kosovo”, as a sovereign, free and democratized country, which the Albanians were left out of in London in 1913. This new republic in the Balkans (despite the many problems it has with the Serbs and among the Jews) is trying to progress in freedom, democratization and Europeanization. Likewise, the Cham problem, from “taboo”, has become the topic of the day in international talks and parliamentary resolutions.

Today, after 113 years of separation, Albanians are an accepted factor in Europe's process of recognizing Western values ​​of Freedom, democratization and Westernization. Our nation has been given the opportunity to seize this opportunity to unite their homeland in a Europe of the same values. By doing so, the West has generally corrected not only the principles on the basis of which the peoples were divided at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, but has also specifically corrected an injustice done to one of the oldest and most suffering peoples of the Western Balkans, the Albanians.

It is the duty of the Albanian political class in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Presevo, Medveđa and Bujanovac to take advantage of this luck, to repay the debt that the poet says "I owe to the year 13, for not closing the wounds", by drafting common integration policies in all areas. But, this first of all requires agreement among ourselves, since it is shameful, not to say anti-national, the hatred, accusations, disagreements and resentment that political leaders have towards each other. Today is the time for unity through integration, tomorrow will be too late./ Memorie.al