Tuesday 21:57
Daily Briefing
Kreshnik Spahiu says Sali Berisha cannot legally run for PD leader. He also says the opposition played both sides on Iran. And he’s been making arguments like this for thirty-six years. by Aurel Cara (Tirana) It was a Monday evening in Tirana, and the parliament had just done something it rarely does cleanly: voted. …
Daily Briefing
When Washington asked its allies to act on Iran, Albania’s opposition chose a protest march instead. the Newsroom (Tirana) On a morning when the United States was pressing its allies to take a public stand against Iran, Albania’s main opposition party was elsewhere. The Democratic Party boycotted Tuesday’s parliamentary session — the one that …
Daily Briefing
The Democratic Party voted on Monday to hold a leadership election in May. It also established a working group whose unstated purpose is to remove the accountability clause Berisha himself wrote — the one that required a chairman to resign after losing a parliamentary vote. He lost in May 2025. The clause is still there. …
Daily Briefing
A demographer at the London School of Economics tells Edi Rama what the data actually shows about Albanian emigration — and why the story is more complicated than “everyone has left.” the Tirana Examiner Media Monitor The conventional wisdom on Albanian emigration is bleak and loud: the country is emptying, the young are gone, …
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 …
