Albania’s Fourth Diaspora Summit: Ambition, Frustration, and the Question of Whether the State Is Listening

The Newsroom (Tirana)

Albanians from 38 countries gathered in Tirana on Tuesday for the Fourth Diaspora Summit, the most ambitious convening of its kind to date. The panels produced a picture more complicated than the institutional framing suggested: genuine policy proposals alongside unresolved structural tensions, and at least one intervention from the floor that cut through the official register entirely.

The representation question

The summit’s opening panels concentrated on the gap between diaspora presence in the world and diaspora weight in the institutions that govern Albanian affairs. Assembly Speaker Niko Peleshi opened the formal proceedings with a frame that acknowledged the scale of the problem while insisting the country has the tools to address it.

Albania ranks 30th globally by remittance weight in gross domestic product, Peleshi noted, placing it among the most remittance-dependent economies in the world. But he was explicit that reducing the diaspora to its financial contribution misses the deeper asset. “The contribution of the diaspora is also human capital, professional, educational, cultural, social, and the capital of values that Albanians abroad radiate and bring to the homeland.” The diaspora, he argued, is no longer a community of emigrants seeking support but a body of active citizens, elected to parliamentary and governing roles in Europe and the United States, part of cultural, scientific, and sporting elites across multiple continents. Representatives from that elite, he noted, were present in the hall.

Peleshi listed what he called immediate tasks, spanning the institutional, diplomatic, and academic. He called for intensive diaspora support for Albania’s EU integration process, asking diaspora members to carry Albania’s case directly to citizens in EU member states who will one day vote, directly or through their representatives, on Albanian accession. He called for the full recognition of Kosovo and its membership in all international organizations, including NATO and the EU. He called for active advocacy on behalf of Albanians in North Macedonia, the Presevo Valley, and Montenegro. He called for inter-parliamentary cooperation among Albanian deputies across the region, for the opening of Albanian universities to diaspora expertise, and for diaspora economic networks to be leveraged to internationalize Albanian businesses, not only to bring capital in. “Only in one program of the Albanian-American Development Foundation, 4,000 PhDs are registered and ready to contribute,” he said.

His broader argument was cultural and generational. Albania, he said, must become not only a source of memories for those who left but a source of dreams. “We must think together about building opportunities for work, entrepreneurship, and careers here for all Albanians in Albania and the world who want to live a life with a mission.” The return of the diaspora, he concluded, must become a national narrative. “Albania has room and opportunity for all Albanians.”

Socialist Party parliamentary group leader Taulant Balla approached the same question through electoral mechanics. He pointed to the 2025 parliamentary elections as the first in which the diaspora vote was actually exercised, calling it a victory for a democracy that had been “truncated for 35 years.” He noted that in upcoming American elections, three Albanians are running in Michigan congressional primaries alone, a development he described as a significant achievement for the community. From the summit, he argued, the work toward a fifth edition should include building networks of elected diaspora representatives and advisory council members. “These are two structures that would make us better, to be more synchronized with each other.”

The intervention from the floor

The first panel did not pass without disruption. Eva Baçi, an Albanian jurist who has lived and worked in Bologna for 25 years, took the floor and addressed Peleshi and Balla directly. Her intervention was the most substantive challenge of the morning session.

Baçi holds three degrees and two specializations from Italian universities. She works 14-hour days in Italy, she said, and has repeatedly sought channels through which to contribute her expertise to Albania, without result. Her critique was not of the diaspora’s willingness to engage but of the state’s actual capacity, or willingness, to receive that engagement. “The desire to return to Albania is very great. That is why we participate in summits, because we are waiting for an open window from the motherland. But the scenario is written very beautifully, like a director who writes very well. We hear narratives, but the main actors are missing, and that is the diaspora.”

She named a specific grievance: an entrepreneur standing beside her, Astrit Poti, who employs 350 families, had not been recognized at the previous day’s awards ceremony. “You are far from reality,” she said, addressing the politicians directly. “You are not close to us. We are without support, and when your own state does not support you, and you cannot contribute to your own state, you are simply a foreigner.” Her conclusion was directed at Balla by name. “You can pass the vote for another four years, but in history you must leave a name.”

Her remarks drew visible tension. The point she was making was structural: the summit creates a space for politicians to speak and diaspora members to listen, inverting the relationship the event claims to embody. “These separated panels are not good. We, the main actors, must speak, must bring the problems. Not listen to politicians.”

The brain drain alarm

North Macedonia Assembly Speaker Afrim Gashi offered the panel’s most analytically precise contribution. He opened by making a linguistic distinction: he prefers the Albanian word “mërgatë” to the Greek-derived “diasporë,” arguing that the native term captures the same meaning while belonging to the language itself. The distinction was not merely stylistic. Gashi’s argument was that understanding emigration requires understanding its specific causes in each context, and those causes differ substantially across Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia.

Albanian emigration after 1990 was primarily economic. In Kosovo, political displacement and violent expulsion were the dominant factors. In North Macedonia, the combination of economic and political drivers produced a distinct pattern. These histories, he argued, cannot be treated as a single phenomenon if the goal is genuine reintegration. “Without understanding the causes well, you cannot arrive at the conclusion of how to achieve reconnection and return.”

His warning about current trends was unambiguous. The exodus of young people is not a neutral demographic phenomenon. It is a policy verdict. “If young people continue to leave, it is an indicator of the failure of our policies. It is not elections that are the best indicator, the best message that comes to us from the people. It is whether we managed to keep young people living in their own country.” The trend, he said, would become alarming if it continued, and the primary cause is the absence of hope.

Kosovo-Albania coordination

Kosovo Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca brought to the panel a set of proposals specific enough to constitute an agenda rather than a statement of intent. He began with a geographic observation: Albanian emigrant communities are concentrated in different countries depending on their origin, with the United States, Greece, and Italy drawing more heavily from Albania, while Germany and Switzerland are dominated by Kosovo Albanians. Any serious joint strategy has to account for this distribution.

His three proposed objectives were concrete. First, joint financing by Albania and Kosovo of Albanian-language teachers deployed to diaspora communities in the countries where their respective populations are concentrated. “The greatest achievement would be if, together with Albania, we could send a large number of teachers who are financially covered by the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Kosovo jointly, to maintain the Albanian school in countries and cities where the diaspora is concentrated.” Second, the creation of a shared umbrella structure consolidating diaspora organizations across the Albanian-speaking world, a form of network architecture that does not currently exist at scale. Third, the development of conditions for return that go beyond emotional attachment. “We have passed the folkloric phase of the Albanian identity dimension. That is maintained in our families, but to return here you need something beyond the emotion that the feeling of being Albanian causes. That emotion makes you a visitor once, twice, or three times a year, but to see a perspective after 30 years of living in the United States and returning to Albania, you need something more. This we must discover together.”

Albanian Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha confirmed that a joint 2026 to 2030 diaspora strategy is under active development and will be discussed with Kosovo. His formulation was terse and to the point. “We have several countries and one diaspora. We need to have one approach if we do not have one approach, we do not have a strategy.”

The regional frame

Former Montenegro Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic, speaking on the pan-Albanian diaspora panel, situated the coordination question within a regional security logic. Albanian communities across state lines have a shared interest in the protection of rights already won, he argued, and those rights can only advance, not be reversed. The alternative to cooperation is not stasis. “If we do not cooperate, we will go toward conflict. Montenegro has felt on its own body how damaging conflict with neighbors is.”

His framing of EU integration was consistent with the summit’s broader institutional consensus: Albania and Montenegro share a European destination, and the integration of all Western Balkans peoples into the EU is a historic achievement in the making for all generations.

What the summit produced

The Fourth Diaspora Summit, taken as a whole, produced a clearer picture of where the gaps are than of how they will be closed. The policy proposals with the most substance came from Konjufca and Peleshi: teacher financing, network consolidation, university opening, and a joint strategy with a defined timeframe. The electoral dimension, emphasized by Balla, reflects a real shift in the diaspora’s formal political weight following the 2025 vote. The brain drain analysis from Gashi named a trend that the summit’s official register tended to frame as an opportunity rather than a crisis.

Baçi’s intervention from the floor named the structural problem that the summit format itself cannot resolve: the people the event is about are not yet the people running it. That gap, between diaspora as rhetorical subject and diaspora as institutional actor, is the one that a fifth summit will need to answer more concretely than a fourth one did.

The summit continues at the Palace of Congresses with 18 panels over two days.