This is a country of the Western Balkans that the European Union is going out of its way to offend, with unusual persistence.
Having broken free from the shackles of one of the most totalitarian Communist regimes of the world, Albania transformed itself into a parliamentary democracy and concluded its first trade agreement with the EU 30 years ago. Since 2007, it has been a beneficiary of the instrument for pre-accession aid (IPA) to the tune of more than €1 billion in total. Today, the EU is Albania’s number one trade partner.
The country officially submitted its application to join the EU in 2009 (see EUROPE 9891/2); the same year, it became a member of NATO. The European Council of June 2014 granted it candidate status. In November 2016, the European Commission issued a conditional recommendation (justice reform, etc.) for accession negotiations to begin with Albania and North Macedonia: for the immediate future, the destinies of the two countries would be linked.
Less than two years later, in April 2018, the Commission, given the progress made by the Albanians, unconditionally recommended the start of these negotiations, whilst continuing to encourage the country on the path of reform (see EUROPE 12003/22). In the conclusions it adopted two months later, the Commission played for time.
On 29 May 2019, the Commission adopted a huge communication on the Western Balkans and reworded the same recommendation, stressing that the conditions set in place by the Council had been met. In June, the Council pushed back its decision until October, but at the European Council of September, the French President Emmanuel Macron, supported by the Danish and Dutch heads of state, openly criticised the principle of this enlargement, vetoed the opening of negotiations and called for the method used to be reformed before anything else.
The Commission therefore quickly got to work on the said reform (see EUROPE 12419/2). It was adopted by the Council in March 2020, which thus gave its political blessing to the long-anticipated opening of negotiations covering both Albania and North Macedonia, as had long been the plan. The European Parliament welcomed the decision. Buoyed up by this long-awaited impetus that promised much for the future, the Commission presented a draft negotiation framework for Albania in July and, on 7 October, proposed a major investment plan for the Balkans, with an estimated price tag of €9 billion. The very next month, Bulgaria announced its opposition to the opening of negotiations with North Macedonia on the grounds of a dispute with the country. Due to the aforementioned principle of simultaneity, Albania was thus forced to watch helplessly as the prospect it had earned slipped away before its eyes.
Bulgaria has a Macedonian-speaking minority who are classified as Bulgarian. The authorities do not recognise Macedonian as an independent language, but as a Bulgarian dialect; they insist Skopje agree that the Macedonian identity and language have Bulgarian roots; they even fear that the very term ‘North Macedonia’ could justify territorial claims; basically, if the Macedonians had to rein in their expectations in order to be recognised by the Greeks, they are going to have to do the same thing with the Bulgarians.
This nationalistic fervour was motivated by internal policy considerations in the run-up to the general elections of December 2021… which were in fact lost by the powers in place, apparently over corruption. The new Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, pledged to resolve the matter before spring 2022, but he is still working on it. In the highly dangerous current geopolitical context, this matter looks like nothing more than a playground quarrel, but the 26 other governments are not doing all that much to resolve it, either because they have automatically sided with a member state at the expense of an outsider, or because they are not in favour of the enlargement and have spotted a handy get-out clause.
At the EU/Balkans summit of Brdo on 6 October 2021, the Commission once again reiterated its position from 2018: the conditions to start accession negotiations had been met. It also spoke out strongly against Bulgaria’s actions (see EUROPE 12806/1).
On 19 May of this year, the European Parliament adopted resolutions by impressive majorities: two reports on Albania and North Macedonia, not without a further plea for negotiations to begin, which the geostrategic context justifies even more (see EUROPE 12956/8). At a joint press conference in Tirana the next day with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, said that the dispute between Sofia and Skopje should be resolved by the end of June, otherwise his government would call for the process to be decoupled from that of North Macedonia (see EUROPE 12957/26). One cannot help but be impressed by this degree of patience – the situation has been at stalemate for 20 months – but also by this good sense – as this is the solution, which should have been adopted some time ago.
The European Council is to meet on 23 and 24 June. According to its provisional agenda, it will discuss Ukraine, economic questions, the Conference on the Future of Europe and ‘Europe in the broader sense’. It is under the heading of the last of these that the fate of Albania is to be debated, but the focus will clearly be on the accession application of Ukraine, on which the Commission will have published its recommendation. But 23 June will also see the summit between the EU and the Western Balkans, which will be at least equally important.
Albania has lined itself up with EU external policy and has proved this once again in its solidarity with Ukraine: it has got on board with the sanctions, closed its airspace to Russia, welcomed refugees. It would be unfair not to take account of this. Obviously, it could do better on certain points – as the European Parliament quite rightly pointed out – but who, even among the existing member states, could not?
Negotiations have been underway with Montenegro since 2012 and with Serbia since 2014. They could have started in 2018 with North Macedonia and Albania. As this column has already pointed out (see EUROPE 12281/1), the EU’s constant wait-and-see attitude towards the Western Balkans is not without its geopolitical risks. Its credibility is at stake throughout the region, but also, more recently, in the eyes of possible future candidates currently under discussion: keeping the candidates in the strongest positions today hanging around will send out a demoralising signal to their counterparts of tomorrow. The recurrent refrain of ‘joining the European family’ has now worn thin and is seen by many as sheer hypocrisy.
By making Albania’s fate depend on a local dispute that has absolutely nothing to do with the country, the EU is losing even more credibility. It is time to redress the balance: it is also a simple question of decency and fairness.
Renaud Denuit