TIRANA, May 6 – Freedom House’s latest report sees Albania’s democracy in decline while still being considered as a “hybrid regime”. According to the report titled ‘Nations in Transit 2020: Dropping the Democratic Facade’, Albania dropped from a score of 3.89 last year to 3.82. Within the Western Balkans region, Albania was surpassed by Serbia, Montenegro as well as Croatia.
Similar to countries such as Georgia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, Freedom House highlighted the Albanian opposition parties’ boycotting of the 2019 elections and the political upheaval that surrounded it. “In Albania, opposition lawmakers followed up on parliamentary walk-outs in 2017 and 2018 by resigning en masse in February 2019. They demanded fresh elections after an investigation revealed that the governing Socialist Party had enlisted the help of organized crime networks in the 2017 vote that brought it to power,” the report states.
Freedom House expresses concern over the government’s decision to go through with the elections as it leaves “voters with no meaningful choice.”
The report then points out that the ruling party in Albania has made efforts “to stifle the country’s media and proceed with plans to oust the president,” all while putting off electoral reforms.
Albania received low scores in the area of judicial framework and independence (3.25) and corruption (2.75), while it received the highest score for local democratic governance (4.50). Its general score of 3.82 is the median for the region.
As regards the Western Balkans, Freedom House points out two of the most notable results that came out of the report – more precisely Serbia and Montengro’s downgrade to being categorized ‘hybrid regimes’. “Meanwhile in the Balkans, years of increasing state capture, abuse of power, and strongman tactics employed by Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia and Milo Djukanović in Montenegro have tipped those countries over the edge—for the first time since 2003, they are no longer categorized as democracies in Nations in Transit,” the report reads.
According to Freedom House, “this change comes at a time when the EU’s accession process is mired in disagreements and no longer serves as a lodestar for democratic reform…” and the presence of third party actors such as Russia, China, and Turkey in the region has diminished the countries’ commitment to democracy.
However, North Macedonia and Kosovo, which rose to a score of 3. Fro last year, have made certain democratic progress.
In general, the report points out that leaders around the world “have dropped even the pretense of playing by the rules of democracy,” and are openly attacking democratic institutions in their countries. These attacks have been most evident against judicial independence, civil society and the media, which has led to a lack of oversight towards the executive power.
