His last visit to Tirana two days ago could have been a totally different experience for the EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Negotiations, Johannes Hahn. Had he found the justice reform approved in the Albanian parliament, he could have carried a solid recommendation back to the Commission and to the other institutions in Brussels to set a date for the opening of accession negotiations for Albania. It could have been just so.
Instead what Commissioner Hahn found in the Albanian capital was just more of the same. Political conflict, absence of honest communication, misinterpretation of events and decisions, lack of willingness to go ahead.
Both sides are unhappy with each other and are finding excuses or triggering innumerable obstacles and delays in the justice reform. Taking turns, political sides are offering and after that refusing to sit in a dialogue. Again, taking turns, they are agreeing to go ahead just to cancel a few days after. Since the justice reform is the major milestone necessary to even talk about the next step in the EU integration of Albania, no political force is showing enough maturity to forge a solid and clear good climate for proceeding forward. The European integration is yet again being politicized instead of being seen as a common national project.
The fragile consensus necessary to pass along the legal package for the justice reform seems to have disappeared just when the Commissioner arrived. Trying very hard to radiate some optimism, Commissioner Hahn urged the sides very strongly to go ahead with the reform. He highlighted the leverage the EU retains during the entire accession process, pointing out that the process desperately needs to start before it’s too late. And with the many ongoing crisis hitting the EU, from terrorism and refugees to the UK referendum, patience is becoming thinner with every passing day.
The justice reform, with all the good will and hard investment of the international community in it, is becoming the circle of the absurd when every time progress seems possible all sides go back to square one. In the best case scenario, if Albanian politics follows the suggestion of the Commissioner and approves the reform this spring, then there is a hope that the EU will show benevolence and decide to set a date for Albania, possibly even within the year.
However, in a more likely scenario the political scuffles will impede any sort of decision until the summer break and talks will resume only in September. This will lead to a substantial delay in the decision making on the side of the EU. The next EU-Albania high level political dialogue might not be until March 2017. A few months after that Albania will go to general elections. The integration steps will have to wait.
In the worst case scenario, the political conflict will worsen and become a full blown crisis with the boycott and the likely opposition protests consuming a lot of energy and setting the stage for even more fights regarding other ongoing delicate decisions such as the Electoral reform and the implementation of the decriminalization legal platform. This will derail the integration process to a whole new negative level. Albania will look like its eastern neighbor Macedonia when the situation and the prospects are just too gloomy.
“Albania is in the driver seat. And there is no speed limit. It is up to you” , Commissioner Hahn said to the National Council for European Integration. He must have been quite perplexed by Albanian politicians’ decision to pull hard on the handbrakes instead.
