Greek Defense Minister Dendias holds Tirana talks on defense cooperation as maritime delimitation file returns to the table

The Newsroom

Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias was received in Tirana on Monday by Albanian Defense Minister Ermal Nufi and Prime Minister Edi Rama, in a visit that Greek media framed in advance as an effort to reactivate the long-stalled maritime delimitation negotiations between the two countries.

After the bilateral with Rama, which was followed by a working lunch at the Prime Minister’s offices, the Albanian side issued no substantive readout. Rama limited his public communication to a social media post describing Dendias as “a valued friend and an unwavering supporter of the strategic partnership between Albania and Greece.” No statement was issued on the maritime file.

The maritime question, formally the delimitation of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone in the Ionian, has been pending since the Constitutional Court struck down the 2009 Berisha-era agreement. A renewed negotiation track opened under Rama and Alexis Tsipras in April 2018 produced no final text. In October 2020, Rama and Dendias, then Foreign Minister, announced jointly that the file would be referred to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Six years on, no referral has been filed. The dossier has remained, in practice, in the office of the President of the Republic, who is constitutionally responsible for mandating the negotiating team for the preparatory phase with Athens.

In April, after a meeting with his counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Rama stated publicly that “we now have an agreement with the Greek government to go to the International Court. That is how it will be done, and then it falls to the court to decide.” Monday’s visit produced no public confirmation that the referral mechanism has advanced.

At the Defense Ministry, Nufi framed the meeting around NATO interoperability, regional stability in the Western Balkans, and the modernization of the Albanian naval fleet. He cited Albanian troop contributions to EUFOR ALTHEA in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to KFOR in Kosovo, joint Greek-Albanian naval coordination in the Aegean and Mediterranean including NATO’s Operation Sea Guardian, and the proposed reactivation of a bilateral technical protocol on military medical cooperation. Nufi also noted Greek support for Albania’s EU accession process.

Dendias’s own readout, published on X after the meetings, was more politically explicit than the Albanian one. He stated that he had discussed “the broader geopolitical situation in our wider region” with Rama, and added, in his own words, that he had spoken about Himara, “which I consider the place of my ancestral origin,” and reiterated his position that “the Greek Ethnic Minority is a bridge of friendship between the two states and the two peoples.” The phrasing places the minority and Himara, an Albanian coastal municipality with a Greek-speaking community and a contested recent local electoral history, inside the bilateral defense agenda rather than separately from it. The Albanian side did not publicly respond to the formulation.

Dendias closed his visit at the Orthodox Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Tirana, where he was received by Archbishop Joan, the head of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania, and laid a wreath at the grave of the late Archbishop Anastasios.

The visit drew a separate intervention from former Prime Minister and Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha, who used the occasion to defend the 2009 maritime agreement his government signed with Athens, the agreement subsequently annulled by the Constitutional Court. Berisha described that text as a “win-win” arrangement, accused Rama of having “sabotaged” the negotiation on behalf of third parties, and claimed that he himself had refused renegotiation after the annulment and instead proposed referral to the International Court of Justice, which he said the Greek side initially hesitated to accept. He characterized the current government’s handling of the file as that of “adventurers” engaged in deliberate delay.

What Monday’s visit did not produce is the operative element. There was no joint statement, no announced date for the ICJ referral, no public movement on the presidential mandate for the negotiating team, and no readout from the Albanian side on the substance of the Rama-Dendias conversation. The defense ministry track, military cemeteries, naval interoperability, medical cooperation, advanced visibly. The maritime track, which Greek media had identified as the purpose of the visit, did not.

A further round at political level is expected in the coming weeks.