Monday 13:02
EU Integrations
A regional snapshot confirms what Brussels has long implied: the Western Balkans no longer fails on laws but on results, with Albania leading not as a finished case, but as the most advanced test of whether reforms can translate into sustained institutional outcomes. by Fatos Kabashi (Prishtina) A regional snapshot released in April 2026 …
EU Integrations
Albania’s rapid progress has shifted EU enlargement from a question of readiness to a calculation of political cost, making delay harder to justify inside the Union. On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs endorsed the 2025 report on Albania by a wide margin, a routine procedural step that carries a less routine implication. For …
EU Integrations
The Commission’s reply to A2CNN contained one sentence on corruption and organised crime in Albania. Read against SPAK’s fifteen-month enforcement record, against the standard the Commission applied to previous accession waves, and against the Commission’s own positive IBAR assessment tabled in parallel with the reply, the sentence reveals less an assessment than a reflex. Albatros …
EU Integrations
On April 9, the Albanian parliament passed an amendment to the 2007 law on tourist ports, allowing private investors who hold strategic investor status to build and operate ports without going through the concession procedures the law ordinarily requires. The EU Delegation responded today with a public statement flagging concerns about public procurement compliance and …
EU Integrations
Brussels wants a Balkan success. What it may get instead is a member state shaped by the same contradictions it chose not to confront. by Albatros Rexhaj (Tirana) The accession process is real. So are the forces riding inside it. The official story of Montenegro’s EU path is compelling in its neatness. A small …
EU Integrations
Albatros Rexhaj A technical finding is being treated as a political choice. The Interim Benchmark Assessment Report for Albania has received a positive assessment from the European Commission. The draft common position is on the table. Member states are deliberating. What is producing the delay is not the evidence. It is the weight being placed …
EU Integrations
In an assessment of Albania’s current European integration process, Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha, who previously served as Albania’s ambassador to the EU in Brussels, says the country has entered the most advanced phase of chapter closings in its history, but stresses that member states will have the final word. “Reforms are our watchword for entering …
EU Integrations
Tirana Examiner | Analysis | Hajdi Xhixha In March 2024, the European Council greenlit accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fourteen months later, no negotiating framework has been adopted, no intergovernmental conference has been held, and the president of Republika Srpska has publicly declared his governing objective to be the secession of his entity …
EU Integrations
How Europe talks to Serbia about reforms it never demands. by Elmi Berisha (New York) Aleksandar Vučić posted about the phone call on Instagram, as he always does after these calls. He had listened carefully to the German foreign minister’s concerns, he wrote. Serbia would work hard on reforms. Especially in the rule of …
