Albania Among Leading Candidates as IBAR Moves to Council

Brussels signals strong progress for Tirana while the Cluster 1 decision moves to Member States, as the Commission’s written response to A2CNN sets out the first public shape of Albania’s 51 transitional requests.

Newsroom Analysis | Tirana

European Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos told BBC News that Albania, Montenegro and Moldova are the three candidate countries progressing well toward membership, with a new accession possible during her current mandate. Separately, the European Commission provided detailed written responses to A2CNN journalist Fjorela Beleshi on a set of questions covering the IBAR process, transitional period requests, Growth Plan disbursements, and the ongoing debate over enlargement reform.

The Commission’s written answers provide, for the first time publicly, a cluster by cluster breakdown of the 51 requests Albania has submitted for transitional periods or technical adjustments in its accession negotiations. Tirana traditionally keeps its negotiating positions confidential, and the disclosure, though limited to aggregate numbers per cluster, offers the most granular public picture yet of the shape of Albania’s negotiating demands.

Kos ranks the candidates
In her BBC interview, Kos described Montenegro as the most advanced candidate, followed by Albania and Moldova, with Ukraine as a fourth possibility if Kyiv sustains reform momentum. She stated her hope that at least one candidate will complete accession during her mandate as Commissioner, provided the pace of reforms holds. Kos also flagged Iceland, noting that a referendum at the end of August will decide whether Reykjavík opens membership negotiations, and observing that Iceland is already deeply integrated with the Union through the Single Market and Schengen.

The ranking is notable less for the ordering, which tracks existing Commission assessments, than for its public delivery by the Commissioner in a non-Balkan forum.

The IBAR bottleneck sits in the Council
On the status of Albania’s Interim Benchmark Assessment Report, the Commission confirmed that its positive assessment has been submitted to the Council together with a draft EU Common Position for Cluster 1, the rule of law cluster. Member States must now agree on that Common Position before Albania can move toward closing any chapters underneath it. Council agreement is the structurally decisive step for the 2027 horizon.

The reply did not dispute Beleshi’s characterisation of a possible new Council-level slowdown. The assessment has been tabled; responsibility for unlocking the sequence now rests with the capitals.

Reform areas flagged for further results
Albania must continue strengthening its enforcement record against corruption, including at high levels, and against organised crime, with specific reference to drug trafficking. Inclusive and constructive engagement between the ruling party and the opposition, and with other actors, was also singled out. Further results are sought in media freedom, corruption prevention, electoral reform, implementation of minority rights, children’s rights and property rights. For the remaining chapters, intensification of pending legislative and institutional proposals is the stated priority.

The inclusion of government and opposition engagement in the Commission’s reply was read in Tirana as a pointed reference. It is the first time in recent correspondence with Albanian outlets that the need for cross-party engagement has been placed so squarely alongside the substantive reform benchmarks.

51 transitional requests, concentrated in sectoral clusters
The distribution of Albania’s 51 requests for transitional periods or technical adjustments, as disclosed in the written response, is as follows. Cluster 2, covering the Internal Market, accounts for 3 requests. Cluster 3, on Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth, accounts for 15. Cluster 4, on the Green Agenda and Sustainable Connectivity, accounts for 14. Cluster 5, on Resources, Agriculture and Cohesion, accounts for 19.

No transitional requests were registered for Cluster 1 (Fundamentals) or Cluster 6 (External Relations), the two clusters where any such request would be read politically as a substantive deviation from the acquis. The concentration in the sectoral and economic clusters is consistent with how other recent candidates have structured their demands, reflecting the cost and implementation timelines attached to environmental, agricultural and infrastructural adaptation.

No decision has yet been taken on any of the 51 requests. Each will receive a response as part of the relevant EU Common Position. Some have been sent back for reconsideration or for additional information, with further assessments pending once Tirana delivers that information.

Growth Plan: third tranche expected this spring
On the Reform and Growth Facility, the assessment for the third release is ongoing, with disbursement expected this spring. The amount ultimately released depends on the Commission’s evaluation. Across the first two reporting rounds, Albania received 44 percent of the available funding against a 51 percent completion rate on required reforms. Total net disbursements to Albania stand at 164 million euros. The remaining four reporting periods will determine how much of the overall envelope Tirana accesses before the end of 2027.

The 44 against 51 ratio is the operational metric that matters. It indicates that the Commission has been discounting partial or delayed reform delivery when calibrating disbursements, rather than releasing proportional funding on volume of activity. The signal to Tirana is that reform quality, not just reform count, governs the money.

Enlargement reform: Commission reframes the question
On the Commission’s proposal introducing three options for reforming the enlargement process, and on whether that exercise risks repeating the slowdown that followed President Emmanuel Macron’s 2019 intervention, the reply reframed rather than engaged the question directly. Enlargement policy, in the Commission’s language, is more than ever a geostrategic investment in the prosperity, stability and long-term security of the continent, and a process based on merit. President von der Leyen and Commissioner Kos have repeatedly framed enlargement as a security matter in the current geopolitical context, and the reply closed by reiterating readiness to continue discussions with Member States on adapting the approach to purpose.

The reframing is diplomatically deliberate. The Commission is not acknowledging that a 2019-style slowdown is on the cards, and it is not ruling one out either. It is instead placing the question inside a security framework in which any retreat from enlargement would be cast as a geopolitical cost rather than a procedural adjustment.

Reading the combined signal
The picture that emerges from Kos’s public remarks and the Commission’s written responses places Albania in the top tier of candidates at the level of Brussels assessment, with the primary structural bottleneck residing in the Council, not in Tirana’s reform record. Whether the 2027 closing horizon holds now depends on Member States reaching agreement on the Cluster 1 Common Position and on the pace of decisions on Albania’s 51 transitional requests.

The transitional requests file is now the operational variable. The aggregate numbers are public; the individual requests, and the Commission’s reaction to each, stay inside the Common Position machinery. What that machinery produces will decide whether 2027 reads as aspiration or as closing date.