For Albania, the real issue is not which accession model Europe chooses, but whether democracy, rule of law, and state integrity can still be restored.
By Genc Pollo
Tirana Times, May 24, 2026 – Europe’s enlargement debate has entered a new phase and Albania should pay attention.On May 18, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly proposed to the European Union leadership that the six Western Balkan countries, alongside Ukraine and Moldova, should not initially join the Union through the traditional model of full membership that characterized previous enlargements, including Croatia’s accession in 2013. Instead, he revived and further detailed the concept of phased accession into the European Union.
The proposal envisions participation without full voting rights in European institutions, gradual adoption of the acquis communautaire, progressive access to the Single Market, increased financial support, and mechanisms to reverse benefits if fundamental European standards are undermined. Full membership would remain the final objective but would come later.
Days earlier, five EU member states, Austria, Czechia, Italy, Slovakia and Slovenia reportedly suggested to the European Commission a similar path of beginning with sectors such as energy, transport and digital policy. These were the latest strokes in the three years old debate about phased accession.
In light of these developments, continuing to present Albania’s path as if the country will simply close all negotiation chapters and enter under the same rules applied during previous enlargements increasingly ignores political realities inside the Union itself.
Yet for Albania this should not be the central debate.
Whether accession becomes phased, accelerated, differentiated, or follows the Croatian model is ultimately secondary. The decisive question is whether Albania itself remains capable of meeting the political meaning of membership.
The country obtained candidate status in 2014 as a constitutional republic with functioning democratic competition and the realistic possibility of political alternation through elections. Today, despite progress in negotiations and the opening of accession chapters, Albania resembles an authoritarian and kleptocratic regime with after a decade of democratic backsliding, weakened institutional checks and balances, concentration of power, and the declining credibility of constitutional safeguards.
More broadly, concerns increasingly extend beyond formal institutions and touch on deeper structural phenomena: state capture, the penetration of informal even criminal interests into government, the expansion of economic sectors vulnerable to illicit capital, and persistent questions over accountability and rule of law.
If enlargement is reduced to technical chapter management while overlooking these realities, then European conditionality risks losing both credibility and purpose.
The most meaningful contribution Brussels can make is not to promise faster accession dates or new institutional formulas. It is to restore conditionality as the central principle of enlargement policy, linking progress not merely to administrative benchmarks but to democracy, constitutional order, independent institutions and genuine rule of law.
Recent signals from the European Union suggest that such a recalibration may still be possible. The question is whether both Brussels and Tirana are prepared to take it seriously.
