Thursday 09:25
The Examiner
by Albatros Rexhaj (Tirana) Last week, El País, one of Europe’s most widely read newspapers, asked Lea Ypi to name the two great problems of the 21st century. Ypi is the Ralph Miliband Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the London School of Economics, an Albanian who grew up under Hoxha’s dictatorship, whose grandfather …
The Examiner
Berlin received a delegation. The next night, Tirana burned. The Editorial Board The photograph requires no caption. A German flag. An EU flag. Two Albanian flags. Behind them, riot police in formation, lit by fire. A projectile suspended mid-air. Tirana. March 22. The night after the Democratic Party’s meetings in Berlin. By evening, a …
The Examiner
By Ardit Bido, Member of Parliament When the V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 placed Albania outside the liberal democracy threshold, the opposition reached for it like a verdict. Embedded in their outrage was a specific claim, one that deserves a specific answer. The claim is that Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia are better democracies than …
The Examiner
A party that normalizes Molotov cocktails is not a credible guide to European standards By Ardit Rada (Tirana) When Washington closed its doors to Sali Berisha — sanctioned by both the United States and the United Kingdom on corruption grounds — the Democratic Party needed a new capital to court. It found one in …
The Examiner
The country spent €10 billion on investment and produced a fiscal model that depends on the people it is losing by Xhenis Kuçi (Tirana) In 2025, for the first time in Albania’s post-communist fiscal history, wages overtook consumption as the primary engine of state revenue. Taxes on salaries and labor contributions — once a …
The Examiner
By Hajdi Xhixha (Tirana) Democracy measurement has become one of the most consequential academic enterprises of our time. What began as a scholarly effort to track political change across countries has evolved into an infrastructure that shapes diplomatic positioning, conditions development assistance, and frames enlargement negotiations. When the Varieties of Democracy Institute publishes its …
The Examiner
The volume by Mario Calivà was presented at Villa Ardizzone. Vincenzo Asero and Hajdi Xhixha joined the author in discussion. by Carmela Finocchiaro and Carlotta La Terra Thirty-five years after the arrival of the ship Vlora and the first great waves of Albanian migration to Italy, Villa Ardizzone hosted an event of profound symbolic …
The Examiner
Governance failures and regime closure are different conditions. Conflating them is not stricter analysis — it is less accurate analysis. by Albatros Rexhaj There is a version of Albania that circulates in reports, briefings, and second-hand conversations. In that version, democratic institutions are hollow, the playing field is fundamentally closed, and the country sits at …
The Examiner
The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2026 places Albania at the threshold of electoral autocracy. That classification is already traveling — into diplomatic cables, policy briefs, and the background assumptions of officials who shape Albania’s EU accession environment. This piece does not dispute that Albania has serious institutional problems. It disputes whether the instrument producing that …
