EU warns Albania over election standards
Albania risks falling further behind in its bid to join the EU.
The European Union has warned Albania that it will fall even further behind in its bid to join the EU if local elections on 8 May fail to meet international standards.
The European Commission is scheduled to report on the country – as well as the other actual or potential membership candidates – this autumn and to recommend whether to open negotiations. A diplomat said that there was no hope of Albania beginning membership talks with the EU next year unless it significantly improved its election record. In the 20 years since the end of Communist one-party rule, Albania has never held an election that was deemed fully free and fair by international observers.
Albania applied for EU membership in 2009 but received a negative opinion from the Commission last November, and EU leaders at a summit in December withheld candidate status. A senior EU official said that the government had made “no serious effort” to implement the Commission’s recommendations.
Stand-off
The country has been paralysed by a stand-off between the centre-right government of Sali Berisha, the country’s prime minister, and the socialist opposition led by Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana, the capital, since a general election in June 2009 that the opposition claims was rigged.
The Socialists have refused to vote in the parliament, preventing the adoption of laws that are required for progress on EU membership. Tensions escalated in January, when security forces shot and killed four opposition protesters.
Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for enlargement and neighbourhood policy, visited Tirana on 30 March, and Miroslav Lajc?ák, the managing director for Europe and central Asia in the European External Action Service, has also visited the country in recent months. The EU has made it clear, however, that it does not want to mediate between the government and the opposition.
“The [local] elections will be very important for the EU’s judgment of the country,” the senior official said. “We cannot do the work that the local partners need to do,” he said. “It’s their country, it’s their responsibility.”