European Commission wants Albania’s government and opposition to focus on its 12 recommendations if Albania wants to have a positive answer on the candidate request next year.
TIRANA, Dec. 7 -The European Union called on Albanian politicians to start reforms, after hailing their progress toward reconciliation following the recent decision of the political parties to start joint work on some main areas.
However, the EU’s Council of Ministers also warned Tirana that without tangible progress they should forget about membership in the bloc.
“Albania has made limited progress in meeting the political criteria for membership and the 12 key priorities for the opening of accession negotiations,” a statement of the EU’s Council of Ministers said in Brussels.
Brussels made it clear that Albania should work more on the “judiciary, the fight against organized crime and corruption and the protection of minorities as well as property rights.”
What is clear to Europe and, hopefully, to Albania as well is that despite recent reconciliation efforts, not enough progress had been made in political dialogue, the fight against organized crime or against corruption. That means that Albania, the government and the opposition together should focus on the 12 recommendations set by Europe which need to be addressed with reforms if they want to have an open door for their request next year.
The EU welcomed the recent start to dialogue in Tirana between the center-right government and the center-left opposition and further underlined the need to overcome the stalemate that has dominated the Albanian domestic political scene.
“The Council encourages the government and the opposition to build on these recent positive developments, fully restoring and sustaining a constructive political dialogue, to support the proper functioning and the independence of key democratic institutions, notably the parliament and the judiciary,” the EU said.
Albanian political parties gave their first signs of reconciliation this week when they jointly voted the new laws on the road code at the parliament. They have already started work on joint work on the electoral reform.
This was also highlight by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton who encouraged Albanian politicians “to continue to work in a constructive manner in the committee to find consensus on electoral reform in good time before the next elections.”
“Reforming the legislative framework for elections in line with OSCE/ODIHR recommendations is one of the key priorities which need to be met for Albania to move further towards its national objective of EU integration,” Ashton said.
Albania has been in political deadlock for months, after the opposition decided to boycott the work of the parliament, preventing the adoption of much-needed reformist legislation.
