Meeting in plenary session on Wednesday 9 July, MEPs approved (502 votes in favour, 120 against and 64 abstentions) the report by Andreas Schieder (S&D, Austrian) on Albania and its progress towards accession to the European Union (see EUROPE 13671/16).
Tirana is currently leading the way among the candidate countries and hopes to join the Union before the end of the decade. This is an “ambitious” objective, but one that has already been endorsed by the President of the European Council, António Costa, and the Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos (see EUROPE 13641/4).
However, the parliamentary report stresses that there is still work to be done in the area of judicial independence and the media, particularly with regard to their funding and the transparency of their owners.
It also highlights the “confrontations and inflammatory rhetoric” by politicians and calls for a more constructive and “inclusive” dialogue.
The recent elections, which saw the current Prime Minister, Edi Rama, re-elected, were criticised for the imbalances in the ballot and the “highly polarised environment” in which candidates “did not enjoy a level playing field” (see EUROPE 13639/29).
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/hso (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)