By ANDI BALLA
The European Union has decided Albania is not ready to be an official candidate for EU membership. It has decided to put aside the country’s application for at least one year, and released a scathing report that has Albania going back to square one – talking about the basic political principles listened in the 1993 Copenhagen criteria.
While the news was does not come as a surprise, it is none the less disappointing. The EU could have simply chosen to give a token nod to Albania’s population by removing the word “potential” out of “potential candidate,” a title which Albania has been carrying around for way too long. It could have given a carrot of sorts and simply delayed opening the negotiations for when the political situation was more suitable, showing it also has big stick to use.
But, in a way, the EU’s response is also understandable as a means of pressure on Albania’s political leaders — the government and the opposition — to evolve beyond their current attitudes and try to move Albania beyond a perpetual political crisis into a normal parliamentary democracy.
So while it would be easy to blame the EU for playing hard to get, Albania and its people need to look in the mirror and find out about why we cannot produce a leadership that is able to overcome its greed for power and sit down to arrive to a consensus for the good of Albania’s EU agenda.
Albania’s leaders – government and opposition — ought to be ashamed for the failure to get candidate status for the country. But since they are too blinded by their greed for power, we will be ashamed for them.
The failure to take blame for the commission’s report by the government astounding. And the opposition’s claim that the failure is the government’s alone is also wrong. Here it is — in black and white, quoting from the report: “Political dialogue is confrontational and nonconstructive, not least because of the political stalemate since the June 2009 elections. This obstructs parliamentary work and prevents necessary policy reforms based on consensus. The government together with the opposition share the responsibility for reaching, in a transparent way and in full respect of the constitution, solutions needed for the country to move forward on its EU integration path.”
This is the worst time for Albania to be playing around with its EU integration efforts. Most of Europe is still suffering under a prolonged economic crisis, and economic hardship does not breed good feelings toward further expansion among the EU population. The rise of far-right groups in several EU countries also indicates anger over economic hardship is turning into classic resentment toward anyone who is perceived to be an outsider.
Thankfully, the commission’s report gets to the point that Albania is tiny. At 3 million, its impact on the EU would almost go unnoticed.
“Albania’s accession would have a limited overall impact on European Union policies and would not affect the Union’s capacity to maintain and deepen its own development,” the report says.
