Albania, Kosovo face major problems in trade barriers despite good political will, experts say

Despite political good will and repeated public statements of full political support for free trade between Albania and Kosovo, the reality is that problems and non-tariff trade barriers persist, experts said at a roundtable in Tirana this week.
Several experts from Albania and Kosovo came together this week at an event organized by the Albanian Institute for International Studies with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation to discuss challenges and solutions for the economic relations between the two countries.
It was part of series of similar roundtables on bilateral relations between Albania and its neighbors, according to Frank Hantke, the head of Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation in Tirana, aiming to increase social and economic development in Albania and the region.
Despite the fact that the emergence of a joint ethnic market between Albania and Kosovo may appear to be a matter of natural development given the historical affiliations between the two countries, that has not been the case on the ground expert said.
“Economic cooperation is one of the weakest links in the relations between Albania and Kosovo. In order to understand what appears as an anomaly in the relations between the two countries, one must first of all look back,” said Albert Rakipi, executive director at the Albanian Institute for International Studies. “During the past century, the markets and the economies of the two countries have operated in complete isolation from each other.”
The trade links of the beginning of the twentieth century, as affected by long Ottoman rule, were disrupted for decades. Kosovo became part of the wider Yugoslav market and Albania progressively closed in on itself. To this day, despite growth in economic and infrastructure links, Kosovo still has more in common with the markets of the former Yugoslavia than with Albania, the experts said at the roundtable. Both countries also look primarily to big EU economies rather than each other when it comes to trade.
In addition, Kosovo and Albania have similar economic development and produce mostly the same things so they end up competing with each other, and special interest groups on both sides of the border urge the respective authorities to raise non-tariff regulatory barriers to businesses on the other side, the experts said.
In one case, said Gjergj Buxhuku, the head of the Confindustria Business Association, a major Albanian business went bankrupt after a Kosovo media campaign declared to milk produced in Albania unsafe for consumption. Buxhuku said the campaign was purposeful, unfair and paid for by special interests in Kosovo afraid of competition from Albania. Albanian media have targeted Kosovo grain and potato products in a similar matter, he added.
Arben Malaj, a former finance minister and Socialist Party MP, said trade conflicts between Albania and Kosovo should be monitored and mediated by nongovernmental bodies composed of experts from an academic and civil society background.
Selami Xhepa, a former Democratic Party MP, said that often economics and nationalism don’t mix well and research has shown that in the Balkans nationalism has been a destructive force. In the case of Albania and Kosovo, which have a shared language and culture, it is regrettable to see a greater occurrence of economic conflicts than with some Albania’s other neighbors.
Despite the conflicts, economic relations and trade have increased rapidly after the construction of a major highway linking central Albania to the Kosovo border, Kosovo experts said at the meeting. And Albania is also increasingly being used a transit country for Kosovo products destined for the EU and beyond.