By Gjon Rakipi
Tirana Times, September 26, 2026 – In mid-September 2026, Albanian farmers received news that was by now becoming painfully familiar: there is still no date for the opening of IPARD III.
Despite repeated assurances from the Albanian government that the European Union’s rural development funds could become available this year, the European Commission said it was still assessing Albania’s request, submitted in April 2026, for the entrustment of budget implementation tasks under the IPARD III programme. Brussels said its assessment was taking into account both the findings of the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, and the changes Albania says it has made to its management and control systems.
Only after that assessment is completed can Albania and the Commission conclude the financing agreement that would make the funds available. More importantly, the Commission said it could not indicate when this might happen.
That clarification came after considerably more optimistic messages from Tirana. In January, Finance Minister Petrit Malaj said the government was “confident and hopeful” that IPARD III would open in September. In July, Agriculture Minister Andis Salla said Albania was in the final phase of the assessment. September has now arrived, but Brussels has declined to provide a timetable.
The stakes are substantial. Albania’s IPARD III programme carries an indicative EU allocation of €112 million for 2021–2027, intended to support farms, food processing, rural infrastructure, diversification, advisory services, forestry and other areas. Together with the planned Albanian state contribution of roughly €34 million, around €146 million in public funding is at stake.
But the real issue is larger than €146 million. The continuing freeze has become a test of whether Albania can be trusted to administer European money according to European rules.
How Albania lost access to the funds
The origins of the current impasse lie in IPARD II.
The programme was created precisely because Albanian agriculture needs modernisation. It was designed to help farmers and rural businesses improve productivity, food safety and competitiveness while gradually bringing Albanian agriculture closer to EU standards.
Instead, an OLAF investigation uncovered serious irregularities in the way some grants were awarded and implemented.
OLAF reported cases in which applicants were asked to pay a substantial part of their grants to pre-selected consultancy companies; contracts were awarded without genuine competition or through manipulated procedures involving fake offers; project prices were inflated; and contractual requirements were breached.
The findings were serious enough for OLAF to recommend that the European Commission consider €33 million connected with the first and second IPARD II calls ineligible for EU financing. It also recommended protecting the entire €112 million allocation for the subsequent IPARD III programme from possible misuse until adequate remedial measures were introduced. OLAF transmitted its findings to the Albanian judicial authorities because of possible criminal conduct.
The original IPARD controversy therefore involved more than individual irregular projects. It exposed weaknesses in the system through which EU agricultural money was distributed in Albania: complicated procedures, powerful intermediaries, inadequate scrutiny and an agricultural administration unable, or unwilling, to prevent serious abuses.
The irony is difficult to miss. A programme intended to help Albanian farmers compete in the European market became inaccessible precisely because the institutions managing it failed to satisfy European standards of financial control.
Farmers are paying the price
The greatest cost of the scandal is now being borne not by Brussels and not necessarily by those responsible for the irregularities, but by farmers who had nothing to do with them.
Albanian agriculture remains dominated by small producers with limited capital, limited access to affordable credit and weak bargaining power. For precisely these farmers, grants can determine whether a greenhouse is modernised, a refrigeration facility is built, machinery is purchased or a small farm develops into a viable rural business.
IPARD was supposed to close that investment gap.
Instead, Albania has gone for years without access to a major source of European agricultural financing.
There has been some movement domestically. By March 2026, Albania’s Agency for Agricultural and Rural Development, ARDA, told investigative outlet Amfora that 76 beneficiaries were involved in court proceedings seeking the full or partial return of IPARD grants because of breaches of contractual conditions. In 2023, only eight such cases had been reported. The broader IPARD affair also remains the subject of investigation by Albania’s Special Prosecution Office, SPAK.
Yet from Brussels’ perspective, reimbursement and investigation are only part of the problem.
The Commission’s latest position makes clear that it is examining whether Albania has created a management and control system capable of preventing similar problems under IPARD III. Under EU rules, national authorities must receive Commission approval for the individual measures they intend to administer. The system therefore depends fundamentally on confidence in the national institutions handling European money.)
That confidence has not yet been restored.
There is also an unresolved financial legacy from IPARD II. The Commission confirmed in September that a bilateral procedure with Albania remains under way concerning irregular expenditure. Any amount ultimately determined to have been spent irregularly or without entitlement will have to be reimbursed to the EU budget. Brussels has not yet disclosed the final amount because the procedure is continuing. (report-tv.al)
This is an important distinction. The €33 million identified by OLAF was a recommendation concerning expenditure considered potentially ineligible; the precise final amount Albania will ultimately have to repay remains subject to the ongoing procedure.
From scandal to institutional test
There is a broader lesson in the IPARD case.
The effectiveness of European assistance cannot be measured simply by how much money Brussels allocates. The decisive question is what happens between the moment European taxpayers provide the funds and the moment an Albanian farmer receives them.
The IPARD experience showed the danger of that chain becoming crowded with politically connected intermediaries, opaque procedures and weak controls. It also demonstrated the limitations of supervision that discovers problems only after money has been allocated.
For Albania, therefore, reopening IPARD III should not simply mean convincing Brussels that enough boxes have been ticked to release the next €112 million. It should mean changing how the system operates.
Grant recipients and amounts should be fully transparent and available in open-data formats. Independent monitoring should extend beyond paperwork to physical verification of investments. Consultancy arrangements should be scrutinised carefully so that assistance intended for farmers does not become a business model for intermediaries. Conflict-of-interest checks should be systematic, while applicants and officials implicated in proven abuses should face effective consequences.
The original lessons remain valid: money should reach genuine beneficiaries as directly as possible; experienced independent experts should participate in evaluation; projects should be monitored during implementation rather than only after completion; and subsequent evaluations should establish whether an investment actually delivered the promised results.
None of these principles is revolutionary. They are basic requirements for responsible administration of public money.
What makes the Albanian case important is that IPARD is not merely another foreign-aid programme. Albania is negotiating membership in the European Union. The capacity to manage EU money according to EU rules is therefore part of the practical preparation for membership itself.
The Commission has said it remains ready to support Albanian farmers, provided that the financial interests of the European Union are adequately protected.
That qualification is now the heart of the matter.
Three years after the IPARD crisis erupted, Albania is still waiting for the programme to reopen. Government optimism has repeatedly suggested that the end of the freeze was close. Brussels’ message in September 2026 is more cautious: the assessment continues, irregular expenditure must be repaid, safeguards must be credible, and there is still no date.
For Albania, IPARD III has consequently become about much more than agricultural subsidies. It is a test of whether the state can demonstrate that European money intended for its farmers will finally reach its intended purpose.
Until that confidence is restored, the €112 million will remain not only frozen funding, but a very visible measure of an unresolved problem of governance.
