Thursday 04:05
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 …
The Examiner
Albania’s media market is broken. The answer is formalization, not prosecution — and certainly not a prime minister pointing fingers from a podium. By Ylli Manjani (Tirana) On March 13th, Prime Minister Edi Rama expelled a journalist from his press conference and publicly accused her outlet of money laundering. No charges have been filed. …
The Examiner
Albania’s public finances look stronger than they have in years. The guaranteed debt is falling. The tax receipts are surging. What the numbers don’t say is that both trends trace back to the same thing: concrete being poured on land that can only be permitted once. by Redion Karriqi (Tirana) In the first two months …
The Examiner
Albania’s opposition took its case to Berlin — but without a reform agenda, it risked shaping the country’s EU file as much as strengthening it. By Ardit Rada (Tirana) Gazment Bardhi, Jorida Tabaku, and Klevis Balliu flew to Berlin on Wednesday and spent a day telling German officials that Albania is failing. They said …
The Examiner
Albania’s new energy minister is a technocrat in a sector that has burned through political appointees. That, right now, is exactly the point. by Dorina Muka (Tirana) In the autumn of 2021, Albania declared an energy emergency. The country’s electricity import bill for the first eleven months of that year had reached 213 million …
