Even after visa-free travel is granted, Albania will continue to be in the slowest lane possible toward EU membership.
By ANDI BALLA
Friendly faces from the European Union have appeared on Albanian television all this week, telling folks not to worry – Albanians will be able to travel visa-free, probably next year. There is even talk about a push by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to have the entire Western Balkans join the EU by 2014, to commemorate the start of WWI in Sarajevo.
These types of promises have been thrown to Albanians for years, as they waited patiently, while their neighbors advanced past them in the line for EU membership and visa-free travel.
The visa-free travel promise might actually come true soon, simply because the EU is running out of arguments against it. And removing the visa barrier is psychologically more important to the average Albanian than EU membership itself with its subtle political and economic implications.
But EU membership is the real test. What Albanians and their friends would like, a faster movement toward membership, faces the current reality — the European Union will give Albania the longest and most arduous track to membership, admitting it when there is absolutely no other choice or excuse — in a decade or more. It has the same tactic for the other passengers in the slow lane, like the war survivor still in international life support, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But it’s a two-way street, EU officials say. It’s Albania’s fault for not working hard to meet the conditions. It’s a semi fair argument. Albanian governments of all colors have not been acting as fast as they should.
However, the way the EU is dealing with our neighbors, Montenegro and Serbia, indicates political decisions carry more weight than doing your homework when it comes to the pace of EU integration. The EU granted these two countries visa-free travel before Albania, and it predicts they will join the EU at least at the same time as Albania; even through Tirana started the process much earlier.
Taking the most pessimistic position, let’s look at what Albania’s wait might really be about. Albania is still very poor by European standards. Its image in Europe is still not the best. So it has to wait as long as possible to pacify the EU electorate.
There is also nothing to lose for the EU by making Albania wait, because Albanians have overwhelmingly supported EU integration, and even if they didn’t, the country is so small, no one cares.
Politicians in the old, powerful EU capitals are already terrified by the hordes of poor people trying to storm Fortress Europe from Africa and the Middle East, and so they fear a waive of illegal immigration from poor Albanians (or Bosnians and Serbs for that matter) as soon as the visas are removed or even legal immigration when Albanians earn the right to work in other places as EU citizens.
I have news for them. It has already happened – nearly a third of Albanians have already moved to the EU, and many enjoy full residential rights there.
Albanians, on the other hand, need to be smarter and realize that they already have the greatest benefit the EU has to offer – free trade. And they need to use it.
It’s not visa-free travel or agricultural funds that EU membership is about. It’s about building a prosperous nation based on hard work and democratic ideals. If you have those two, then EU membership is nice, but not vital.
So rather than praying at the door of the EU mansion to be let in, it might be high time for Albania to start considering the guest house as its permanent home and work hard to make it fully livable.
