Albania insists on applying for EU membership

TIRANA, March 17 – Albanian authorities have insisted they will take advantage of the pro-enlargement Czech European Union Presidency to present its candidate status application before the end of June.
It comes at a time when Europe is not that sure that a future near enlargement with the western Balkan countries would be good to have.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that the 27-nation European Union needed a “consolidation phase” before it added new members though acknowledging states in the western Balkans were worried about their bids to join the European Union being pushed back into the distant future.
“We don’t want this, but no one is well served in a Europe that can’t keep up with integration and takes on too many new members too quickly,” Merkel said.
The global economic crisis has made the European Union less enthusiastic about accepting new members from the Balkans.
Last month, for example, EU foreign ministers did not agree to give a green light for the European Commission to start assessing Montenegro’s membership application.
Montenegro’s bid was expected to encourage Balkan neighbors such as Albania and Serbia to file their own applications in the coming months.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said last week that “Albania has received the green light ‘in principle’ from the Czech Presidency of the European Union to hand in its request for membership,” adding that 96 percent of Albanians back the country’s EU bid.
The European Commission has identified normal procedures in Albania’s upcoming parliamentary elections as a condition of its candidacy, with the country set to hold parliamentary elections on 28 June. Meanwhile, the IMF recently warned Tirana to be prudent in its spending ahead of the elections, or risk undermining the country’s macroeconomic stability.
Berisha’s decision to file an EU membership application is seen in Brussels as a pre-electoral trick. Albania’s political class also hopes to benefit from NATO opening its doors to the former communist country at the alliance’s summit on 3-4 April.
It was first the Albanian opposition saying by the end of last year that the government had to rush in its application. Now they are more silent and often reluctant to comment about the timing for the application concerning whether it would be good at this moment.
Taulant Balla, a Socialist lawmaker, said while in Brussels, it would probably be better if the country was more focused on talks with the EU on facilitating or liberalizing the visa regime than asking for the candidate status.
Amid falling public support for further EU enlargement in Western Europe, mainstream political parties do not wish to give ammunition to populists wishing to exploit fears that a poor country like Albania would add to the bloc’s problems, said one diplomat.