A new policy brief on the EU integration and public opinion in the Western Balkans, published by the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG), suggests that an overwhelming majority of Albanians still supports the integration on the European Union. By analyzing the data from a recent Ipsos survey, BiEPAG concludes that on average 82.5% of the Western Balkans citizens “support their country’s goal of joinin the EU,” with citizens from Kosovo and Albania being the more enthusiastic, with 94.9% and 91.1% respectively. Even in Serbia, “the region’s biggest sceptic”, a 64.1% of respondents support their country’s ambition to join the EU.
The survey, conducted on a nationally representative sample consisting of a minimum of 1000 respondents aged 18+, through telephone and online interviews, gives other interesting statistics which have been analyzed by BiEPAG. According to the survey, 30.6% of the respondents in Albania thinks that the EU accession will happen over the next 5 years, 25.1% of people believe it will happen over the next 10 years, 11.9% have responded over the next 20 years, and 20.9% of the respondents thinks that Albania will never join the EU. Only 9.5% of the citizens participating in the survey said that they didn’t know or refused to answer the question. In Kosovo people seems to be even more optimistic, with 48.5% of the respondents believing that Kosovo will join the EU over the next 5 years, and 25.5% of them over the next 10 years.
“If people in the Western Balkans still support the EU integration process, it is arguably because they see it as an opportunity for much-needed change in their countries’ quality of governance and economic performance,” says BiEPAG, adding that citizens of WB evaluate positively the role of the EU in the national political reforms (39.7%), and economic reforms (40.3%).
According to the Ipsos survey, the main reason why people are dissatisfied with their own country progress in the EU, is related to their national politicians and institutions. In Albania, 10.7% of the respondents consider the main reason of dissatisfaction the poor situation in institutions and the inadequate laws and corruption, while 6.2% of them consider the authorities as not working genuinely on integration or having unclear orientation and inadequate policies. Overall, 33.9% of the respondents in Albania are very dissatisfied with their countries’ progress in the EU, while 23.6% of them are mostly dissatisfied, for a total of 57.5% of people being dissatisfied with the progress towards the EU.
For BiEPAG the “currently high level of popular support for the EU in the region will probably only be as sustainable as the accession prospect proves credible,” suggesting that the European Commission “must speed up the implementation of the revised enlargement methodology, with more meaningful incentives to continue reform.”
