Albanians need the EU to make this country better. But will that be enough?
TIRANA TIMES EDITORIAL
The man in charge of enlargement in the European Union’s executive branch, Commissioner Stefan Fule, was all smiles and emphatic to a fault this week about how he felt about Albania’s position in terms of getting the status of a candidate for membership in the European Union.
“Beyond any doubt, with no conditionality or reservations,” Fule said. The emphasis is needed because the Albanians have heard a couple of wishy-washy diplomatic-jargon-filled recommendations from the commision before, only to be shot down by member states (specifically the ones with growing population of Eurosceptic voters).
We will drop any diplomatic pretence here: Were this another time or place, not only would Albania have received the candidate status, it would have opened negotiations by now. Albania is facing clear double standards in its integration process. There is plenty of blame to go to the Albanian political elite, which have clearly held the country backward, but progress from now on will also be heavily influenced by what happens to the EU itself — on whether the union go on rudderless, blind-sighted by the economic crisis that has shaken it to its core or whether it will find new purpose and return to its best aspirational values.
Back in 1990, a group of Albanian high school kids formed a band, Fiery Tune, that shocked the weakening communist establishment by declaring proudly in their song “We will make Albania like the rest of Europe.” It’s a sentiment that was then no different from that of their Polish or Bulgarian counterparts. Those teens back then are now in their 40s — and under the current steam, they will be retired by the time Albania is “like the rest of Europe” — a European Union member that is. No wonder then Albanians are getting impatient.
Albania’s prime minister too is getting very impatient, so much in fact, he too is no longer being diplomatic. He has basically resorted to threatening the EU that if it keeps up Albania and others in the region in perpetual limbo, the Balkans could slide back to nationalism and instability.
The problem is that the mood in Europe, shaped largely by the economic crisis, is not in Albania’s favor. As an article by the Financial Times this week put it — “Moves to incorporate the poor, mainly Muslim state are highly divisive, particularly because of fears about migration and organised crime.” Whether right or wrong, that’s the light under which the growing number of Eurosceptic voters (luckily still in the minority) will judge Albania’s EU worthiness: Poor, alien and criminal (and ready to invade Europe with it’s 2.8 million population).
Albanians can’t control the feelings of European voters, misguided as they might be. Put the political elites of EU member states should know better. Another rejection at the end of the month and continued dragging of feet in the integration speed — will set “a feeling of discrimination and killing of hope for an overwhelming part of population which feels deeply European and wants to be accepted and live as one,” as one commenter to the Financial Times article put it. “When it comes to crime and corruption, bringing Albania closer to the EU would help Albanians fight it more effectively. By isolating Albania it would make it more difficult for Albanian authorities to lower crime and corruption and this means more negative consequences from crime and corruption for a longer time from Albania to the EU.”
Albanians have no doubt that they need the EU to make a better Albania. The question they are now starting to ask is whether the EU needs Albania.
