An Open Letter to Commissioner Marta Kos

Dear Commissioner Kos,

A statement issued this week by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) concerning an exchange between Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, and a journalist from Syri TV raises a question that goes beyond a single press conference. It raises a question about the evidentiary standards applied to organizations whose conclusions are often cited in European Commission reporting.

The EFJ statement concluded with the following assertion:

“Journalists should be able and free to ask all necessary questions in the public interest, and Edi Rama and his government have an obligation to be transparent and answer those questions. This is not how you get closer to joining the EU. Media freedom and freedom of speech are fundamental rights. Those who flout these rights deserve nothing but our contempt.”

The principle that journalists must be free to ask questions is not controversial. It is foundational to democratic life.

What is controversial is the implication that political leaders must provide the answers a journalist demands — and that failing to do so constitutes a violation of media freedom serious enough to be linked to a country’s progress toward European Union membership.

The full video of the press conference in question is now publicly available. It shows a thirteen-minute exchange in which the journalist repeatedly interrupts the Prime Minister while insisting that he confirm a specific narrative rather than respond in his own words. The Prime Minister himself identifies this dynamic during the exchange. Yet he kept the press conference open. He continued to engage. He did not remove the journalist, did not end the session, and did not prevent the encounter from being broadcast.

That is not what suppression looks like. It is what restraint looks like.

Unusual restraint, in fact, by the standards often applied to political leaders across democratic Europe.

Had the EFJ obtained a transcript or reviewed the video before issuing its statement, it would have seen a Prime Minister exercising restraint rather than committing repression.

Instead, the Secretary General issued a condemnation based on a report from Syri TV — a television channel with a well-documented editorial hostility toward the Albanian government — without verification, without a transcript, and without reviewing the video evidence that was available before the statement was published.

This matters for a reason that goes directly to the Commission’s work.

EFJ statements are frequently cited in European discussions concerning media freedom and rule-of-law conditions in candidate countries. When such statements are activist-driven rather than evidence-based — when they reflect the editorial framing of a politically hostile domestic outlet rather than independent observation — they distort the very assessments they are meant to inform. For that reason, clarity about the evidentiary standards applied to such sources becomes essential whenever they are referenced in European institutional reporting.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the EFJ’s position suggests that Albania’s progress toward the European Union depends on whether its Prime Minister provides answers in a form deemed satisfactory by journalists from outlets openly hostile to his government. That is not a press-freedom standard. It is a demand that a democratic leader adopt the framing of his political opponents as a condition of his country’s European path.

Consider also what the footage itself demonstrates. A journalist from an opposition-aligned outlet was present in the room. She asked her questions. She interrupted the Prime Minister repeatedly for thirteen minutes. She broadcast the encounter freely. The government did not prevent any of this.

If such an exchange can be cited as evidence of media suppression, then the term itself begins to lose meaning — and with it the credibility of genuine press-freedom concerns that deserve careful attention.

This is not the language of an independent observer. It is one-sided activism dressed in the vocabulary of institutional monitoring.

The language used in the EFJ statement reinforces that conclusion. Describing the conduct of a democratically elected Prime Minister as “deplorable” and declaring that he deserves “nothing but our contempt” — on the basis of a partisan article, without verification, following a press conference in which the journalist in question was given thirteen uninterrupted minutes to pursue her line of questioning — is not proportionate institutional language. It is the language of political alignment. And it has no place in materials that inform European Commission assessments of candidate countries.

This matters not because Albania is beyond criticism. No democracy is. The scrutiny of governments by journalists and civil society organizations is both necessary and welcome.

But scrutiny loses its credibility when it abandons the discipline of verification.

And when unverified advocacy is treated as independent assessment in European policy discussions, the damage is not only to Albania’s reputation — it is to the integrity of the evaluative process itself.

The European Commission has consistently emphasized that its assessments of candidate countries rest on evidence, consistency, and impartial evaluation. I would respectfully ask that the same standard be applied when determining the weight given to civil society statements in that process — and that organizations whose conclusions are cited in European reporting demonstrate that the primary record was examined before judgment was rendered.

Respectfully,

Albatros Rexhaj

Tirana, 14 March 2026

Read also the Tirana Examiner editorial position on the same issue