There is great potential in deeper relations between Albania and Greece, but lack of cooperation and mistrust is leading to missed opportunities, a study by the Albanian Institute for International Studies and the Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy concludes.
TIRANA, Dec. 16 – While there are several indicators of a renewed political will in both Albania and Greece to take the bilateral relations out of the frozen status-quo, the citizens’ mutual perceptions still involve a considerable amount of distrust. It is the responsibility of the two countries’ elites, stakeholders and media to address concerns and promote new images among their citizens in order for improved relations in the near future, These were among the key findings of a project which aimed at measuring, analyzing and interpreting both countries citizens’ perceptions, expectations and evaluations of the actual and future Albanian-Greece relations, funded by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) and conducted by the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS) and its Greek partner, the Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy (ELIAMEP).
The results were presented at a recent conference held in Tirana, Debating Contemporary Albanian-Greek Relations. Apart from the presentation of the survey by Alba ȥla on behalf of AIIS on the Albanian perceptions and by Ioannis Armakolas for ELIAMEP on the Greek perceptions, part of the conference was a broad audience of public stakeholders.
Among the key participants were Arta Dade, head of the Parliamentary Commission on Foreign Relations of the Republic of Albania; Vangjel Dule, Deputy Speaker of the Albanian Parliament and head of the main party representing the Greek minority in Albania; Leonidas Rokanas, Ambassador of Greece to the Republic of Albania; as well as Frank Hantke of FES; the former Albanian Ambassador to Greece Bashkim Zeneli, Remzi Lani from the Albanian Media Institute and Pirro Misha from the Instituteof Dialogue and Communication among others. The event was chaired by Albert Rakipi, Executive Director of AIIS.
Perceptions and misperceptions
From the surveys’ findings presented at the conference it was clear that citizens’ responses were affected by the current situation in both countries. Accordingly, these perceptions were necessary to be contextualized, especially in the case of Greek citizens’ responses as the economical crisis had to be taken into account. In both cases, citizens perceived that governmental relations were developed on a better level than societal ones. This lack of considerations over the ‘human element’ was emphasized by both the Ambassador of Greece in Albania, Rokanas, and Misha.
While Albanian citizens’ perceived relations with Greece as important and rather normal, further improvement was considered important with 44 percent of citizens indicating this. Among other indicators, Greece was perceived as the major threat by 18 percent of Albanian citizens. On the other side the majority of Greek citizens perceived that relations with Albania were neither good nor bad (49 percent) and not much improvement was thus expected.
Comparative results of the Albanian and Greek citizens’ perceptions
Following ȥla’s and Armakolas’ survey reports, Nafpliotis presented a comparative perspective of the findings in both countries. Thus, a rather constant element of the surveys was the quite contradictory perception of citizens in the two countries when it comes to key issues of the Albanian-Greek relations. These different perceptions were visible in relation to issues such as the assistance of Greece in Albania’s Euro-Atlantic integration, the amount and direction of economic benefits in the last decades, the role of Albanian migrants in the Greek economy, the respect of the Albanian state for the rights of the Greek minority, as well as the importance and the influence of the Cham issue in bilateral relations. About all of these issues, citizens of both countries would perceive their countries’ or citizens’ contribution as higher and their received benefits as lower. Also, while the most important issue in bilateral relations according to the Albanian respondents was considered the border issue (46 percent), followed by the Cham and the Albanian migrants issue, in the case of Greek respondents the most important was immigration (41 percent), followed by the Albanian expansionism and the Greek minority issue.
A new chapter in Albanian-Greek relations
Some of the major issues emphasized during the conference panels were: the need to revitalize Albanian-Greek bilateral relations, the amplification of economic cooperation and investments, the emphasizing of the ‘peoples’ element in these relation, as well as the need to focus on the future rather than bring back or emphasize previous problems. Initially, Dade and Dule while appreciating the recent visits of Greece’s president and foreign minister in Albania, emphasized the need for collaboration on a parliamentary basis in order to facilitate governments’ dealing with some problems which were considered by Dade as not necessarily ‘unsurpassable’.
At the same time, the Ambassador of Greece in Albania, Rokanas, emphasized the great amount of common issues among the two countries, the need of looking ahead rather than on what is left behind, as well as the negative effects of stereotypes which according to him harmed the practices of good neighborhood.
He considered the Albanian-Greek bilateral relations as “pivotal, strategic and special, not to say unique in their kind”. This evaluation was based on a series of reasons: the importance of the two nations’ common history and their relations since antiquity; the ‘human element’ of the relationship (Albanian migrants, the Greek minority); Greek open-doors for Albania after the fall of communism; the deep bilateral economic relations; and last but not least, Greek’s firm support for Albania’s Euro-Atlantic integration. According to him, a multidimensional bilateral relation was a necessity while there was a need to enter a new era in the Albania-Greek relations.
Media misrepresentation, stereotypes and bias selectivity of information
Based on the key findings of both surveys and the reported negative perceptions of citizens, Lani and Misha emphasized the importance of the media in promoting stereotypes through the active bias selectivity of information. Furthermore, it was underlined especially the visual media tendency to focus on events with nationalist background, or that can at least be instrumentalised for these purposes, and the equally negative role that the social media plays in promoting existing stereotypes and constructing new ones. This negative impact of the media on image construction was also emphasized by the Ambassador of Germany to Albania, Hoffman, who recognized the role of the media on citizens’ perceptions.
Cultural and educational issues as a potential for change
The lack of stronger cultural and artistic ties between the two countries was considered as one of the reasons for these cultivated negative perceptions. Misha emphasized the fact that the Albanian-Greek relation is short of agreements on cultural issues.
A more delicate topic on this regard was educational issues. After some short remarks by Alqi Puli – the current Albanian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs who pointed out he was speaking was speaking on a personal capacity as an ethnic Greek rather than his Albanian governmental function to this conference – the discussion focused on history books and the negative language used in portraying neighbors.
Ambassador Rokanas emphasized that such an initiative to change the language in history books was already taken in Greece and some work was being done to expand it to the Albanian context. Albanian Ministers of Education and Culture, respectively Nikolla and Kumbaro had already demonstrated good will in taking the initiative forward.
A similar conference is expected to be held in Athens in order to present the survey’s findings to a Greek audience as well, after the vibrant discussions in Tirana.
