The process of the opening membership talks between Albania and EU has been postponed. The Committee of the Permanent Representatives, agreed that Albania is still not ready to hold the inter-governmental conference which would formally start the accession negotiations. While the EU ambassadors acknowledged Albania’s work on various reforms, they emphasized the need of showing more progress in order to meet the conditions for opening membership talks. Italy tried to ease the language of the draft prepared by the EU ambassadors, but failed to convince other member states.
Why the process is stalled for Albania?
Out of the clear conditions set by the General Affairs Council’s decision to open accession negotiations with Albania in March, none has been fulfilled entirely. However, key in the list is the functioning of the Constitutional Court which is still not complete in Albania.
Albert Rakipi, Chairman of the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS), highlights that “establishing and making sure that the Constitutional Court is functional is the very first step to restore constitutional order in the country. This is not a negotiable item from the side of the European Union however most importantly Albania needs the Constitutional Court with or without the process of integration since its presence is essential for the very survival of a normal democratic state. Albania needs the Court, not the EU.”
Recently the US Embassy in Albania has multiplied its calls urging the decisions makers to cross off this item in the list within the remaining days of 2020. Local experts claim that the process of building up the Court is being delayed by the political internal struggle of the majority to achieve its short-term political interests.
The second and equally important item is the one-sided vote in the Parliament to change the electoral law. In June of this year, all political sides in Albania, including the opposition parties currently outside of the Parliament reached an agreement, under heavy mediation from international community, to implement the electoral reform with consensus. The deal was negotiated and then saluted by the Embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom and the presences of the EU delegation and OSCE in Albania. The agreement was even commended by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as EU Special Representative Borrel. However in October the parliamentary majority approved constitutional changes that had not been discussed or agreed upon with the opposition and which were judged as ‘extremely rushed’ by the Venice Commission.
This has produced a considerable level of discontent among key EU stakeholders including in Germany, a member state generally in favor of enlargement.
Experts believe that the EU has clearly articulated that the lack of consensus over the electoral reform, especially just months before the next round of general elections, is very problematic. “The repeated calls of the EU to change the constitution only with accord among the sides were ignored by the majority. Despite the fact that there full decades have gone by since the fall of communism, Albania is the only country in the region that has repeatedly failed the most basic test of holding free and fair elections and a transfer of power within internationally accepted standards,” Rakipi told Tirana Times.
It is quite unlikely that a positive decision about holding the first intergovernmental conference with Albania or any other positive steps is taken in March of 2021. Diplomatic sources told Tirana Times that a more feasible scenario would be in June of next year and only is Albania manages to carry out peaceful, free and fair electoral process.
Albania: the deafening silence
The silence from the majority to address the issue speaks volume about the failure of the government to fulfill the requirements. In regard to EU talks, Albania’s position has been always that of playing in the defense. In various occasions, Prime Minister Edi Rama has claimed that Albania has already meet its requirement to continue the membership talks, but internal political crisis and elections in certain member States, especially Netherlands, are affecting Albania’s advancement towards the EU. But this time around seems more difficult to continue repeating these claims, considering that the EU specifically argued that the refusal to open the green light to the membership talks, is related to the failure of Rama’s majority to fulfill the requirements made in March by the EU.
At the other hand, the opposition leader Lulzim Basha has made it clear in the last weeks that a failure in the membership talks, will be attributed directly to the Rama’s government mismanagement of the requests made by the EU, including the new electoral reform which was contested heavily from them since October.
North Macedonia: once again vetoed by neighbors
North Macedonia case is different. Bulgaria has blocked for the moment the acceptance of the membership talks with North Macedonia for two reasons: Sofia pretends that the Macedonian language is a dialect of the Bulgarian language, and also that there is no such thing as a Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. Once these disputes will be resolved, North Macedonia will be offered a date for the inter-governmental conference. Zaev’s government at the other hand refuses to accept the conditions made by Bulgaria. Sources form the German Presidency of the EU have said to the media that efforts will be made until the very last moment to resolve this dispute. A lot is at stake in North Macedonia where the years’ long impasse with Greece was resolved after the Prespa Agreement, changing the name of the country which caused division and controversy among its citizens.
