Saturday 00:20
Daily Briefing
Ferit Hoxha took office with a phrase rather than a programme — “national interest as the guiding principle.” Nine days later, the phrase has content. by Aurel Cara (Tirana) What kind of foreign minister is Ferit Hoxha? His first nine days in office, spanning 6 to 15 March, offer a remarkably legible answer. Not …
Daily Briefing
Prime Minister Edi Rama used his regular Sunday podcast, Flasim, to address four distinct policy and political matters: the parliamentary immunity vote on Deputy Belinda Balluku, fuel price stabilisation, the Porto Romano port project, and the Constitutional Court’s TikTok ruling. The weekly broadcast has become Rama’s primary vehicle for setting the political agenda outside parliament …
Daily Briefing
One day after the Balluku vote, the Prime Minister did not come to explain himself. He came to reframe the entire terrain. By the Tirana Examiner News Desk Friday There is a version of Friday’s press conference that reads as damage control. Edi Rama, facing diplomatic blowback after his parliamentary majority voted 82-to-zero to …
Daily Briefing
Albania and Türkiye share a warm bilateral relationship, a record of political solidarity, and a personal rapport between their leaders that Rama describes as genuinely easy. What they do not share, the Albanian prime minister told Türkiye Today this week, is an economic relationship that matches any of that — and Rama is no longer …
Daily Briefing
Whatever Albania’s parliament decides on 12 March on SPAK’s arrest request, the investigation into Belinda Balluku will continue. by Alban Bici (Tirana) When the Albanian Assembly convenes to vote on whether to authorize the arrest of Deputy Belinda Balluku, it will be deciding exactly one thing: whether the existing travel ban should be replaced …
Daily Briefing
Homeland Justice’s timing was not coincidental. The attack landed on the day Tirana was supposed to host Israeli cybersecurity firms for a government-patronised conference. by the Newsroom (Tirana) The Iranian-linked hacker group Homeland Justice breached the Albanian parliament’s IT infrastructure on 10 March, deleting data from staff accounts and publishing internal emails on Telegram …
Daily Briefing
When a German official who once refused to meet Berisha changes his mind, the question isn’t what was said — it’s what shifted. by the Newsroom (Tirana) Peter Beyer, the Bundestag rapporteur for the Western Balkans, met opposition leader Sali Berisha in Tirana on Monday — a meeting that is notable less for what …
Daily Briefing
Albania’s new gender equality framework reaches the UN. The harder work begins at home. by Rexhina Bici (New York / Tirana) On March 10, in a conference room at the United Nations in New York, Albania’s Minister of Health and Social Welfare Evis Sala said something that sounded, in that setting, almost unremarkable. Gender …
Daily Briefing
The debate around the reform has become political. The legal question before the Supreme Court is simpler: whether detention decisions must finally be justified by facts rather than formula. by Elis Zenelaj (Tirana) More than half the people currently sitting in Albanian prisons have not been convicted of a crime. As of December 2025, 2,569 …
