European Commissioner for Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn has said that the next three six-monthly presidencies of the EU Council – by Bulgaria, Austria and Romania, with their “very strong” commitment to the Balkans – will be a good time to plan the opening of Albania's EU accession negotiations.
“I think it could be a pretty good time window, where we really start to work, not only on concrete results but to achieve something in terms of starting negotiations”, Hahn said at a conference in Tirana with Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama on Thursday 9 November. According to Balkans media, Rama said his country deserved to open the accession negotiations.
Hahn stated that 15 years after the European summit in Thessaloniki, the EU member states and those of the Western Balkans would meet for a new summit in Sofia in May 2018. This summit will be preceded “in February” by the European Commission's presentation of the Balkans strategy and the traditional progress reports on EU candidate or potential candidate countries.
The commissioner announced that the “famous verification process” of the Albanian judges and prosecutors had just started. This is one of the conditions for opening the EU accession negotiations. Hahn said that there should be some initial results "by the end of the year”. He also underlined progress in the fight against drug trafficking, and the significant decrease in unjustified asylum requests from Albanians. In his view, it is important to change Albania's “reputation deficit” by communicating more.
Hahn also said that European aspirations should be a national objective for Albania, shared by the forces of the whole country, be they political or of civil society, as well as of the media. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)