Application in Brussels, Trumpets in Tirana

By Jerina Zaloshnja
Only two months before the parliamentary elections, Albania will apply for candidate status to the European Union. Despite all the diplomatic and public advice of EU high officials and of diplomats of EU Member States in Tirana not to hurry with the application process, the government seems adamant to knock on EU’s door with an official application in hand. According to sources close to the Prime Minister, the application for candidate status will be filed on April 28 in Brussels. Trumpets will be blasting in Tirana, though. And they will be loud it seems, due to the upcoming elections. The popular celebrations organized by the government, with flags, slogans, rock and folk music for NATO membership will be repeated apparently, this time for the candidate status application to the EU.
Brussels’ rejection of Albania’s application would negatively affect the upcoming elections. However, it is not even theoretically possible that Brussels responds to Albania’s application before election day, June 28 this year. It is clear that the centre-right government of Prime Minister Berisha wishes to make heavy use of NATO membership and candidate status application to the EU during the already unfolding electoral campaign. And this is to be expected – every other government would do the same. The question is though, how will both NATO membership and the EU candidate status application affect election results? Is membership in the Alliance and the application to the EU a factor that could mobilize and gain more votes?
Despites difficulties in forecasts, what can be confidently asserted is that economic matters will be decisive in the upcoming elections. While NATO membership conclusively anchors Albania in the West, it is far-fetched to think that Albanian citizens will see the membership as a magic wand for all of their daily concerns – poverty, unemployment, and low quality of basic public services. Both major competing parties are becoming more and more aware of the fact that NATO and EU flags cannot make the difference in the upcoming elections. Also, for the first time since the fall of the communist regime, tangible issues that affect the economy and citizens’ livelihoods dominate electoral campaigns.
A case in point is tax policy. It has become clear in the past two weeks that electoral campaigns center on this issue. On a daily basis, Prime Minister Berisha’s centre-right government is accusing the Municipality of Tirana, dominated for the last eight years by the socialists, of raising taxes for small businesses three-fold. The capital will be decisive in the upcoming elections and both parties are trying to garner the support of the prevailing small businesses through the debate on taxes.
If Albanians had been told twenty years ago, freshly out of communism, that paying taxes and death are two things man cannot avoid, roars of laughter would have been heard in return. Since the fall of communism, the issue of taxes and tax policy has been negligible in political parties’ electoral battles. Citizens’, and by way of consequence, parties’ indifference to taxes is difficult to believe, when taxes are clearly a battle horse in developed democracies and economies.
However, let us not forget that, not only in the first decade of transition, but even now, a considerable number of Albanian citizens refuse to pay for the services provided, such as electricity. In the parliamentary elections of 2005, the issue of taxes and its policies was present, yet not primary. However, it is clear now that economic issues, including tax policy, will be predominant topics. Even the small parties have come to understand their importance, since, parallel to festive NATO or EU integration trumpets, they have also started to talk about or build traps for their adversaries in the matters of taxation and its policies.