Two letters, one inconsistency: the question Chairman McAllister has to answer

Two formal acts entered the European Union’s institutional record within forty-eight hours of each other. Read together, they raise a question about verification standards, institutional consistency, and the integrity of the enlargement process.

by Albatros Rexhaj (Tirana)

On May 9, on Europe Day, the European Union’s diplomatic presence in Albania articulated its collective institutional position. The diplomatic corps of EU member states accredited to Tirana, through its Dean, issued a joint statement of full confidence in Ambassador Silvio Gonzato and his team and in their professionalism, integrity, and dedicated service. A Brussels spokesperson reinforced with a statement strongly condemning personal attacks on the Ambassador and reaffirming full confidence in him and in his work. The occasion was Sali Berisha’s Europe Day broadcast accusing the Ambassador of fabricating against the Albanian opposition in Brussels. The European Union’s response was unambiguous and collective.

Two days earlier, on May 7, David McAllister, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote to Marta Kos, Commissioner for Enlargement. He transmitted the account of one Albanian opposition Member of Parliament, Jorida Tabaku, alleging structural exclusion of the opposition from the integration process and the hollowing-out of parliamentary oversight. He posed two formal questions and requested a substantive response from the Commission.

These two documents are now part of the institutional record. Read together, they expose a procedural inconsistency that the office of AFET Chair is obligated to address.

The Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs is of course entitled to transmit concerns raised by opposition actors in candidate countries. The act of transmission alone is not, in itself, an institutional judgment on the EU mission in the country concerned. But once such concerns are formally elevated into the enlargement process without visible reference to the standing institutional assessment of the Union’s own Mission on the ground, the procedural question becomes unavoidable. That is the situation the May 7 letter creates.

The letter rests on a premise. The premise is that the European Union’s institutional reporting from Albania, as it currently stands, requires supplementation from a single Albanian opposition parliamentarian on precisely the questions the Mission exists to monitor. The letter does not indicate that the Mission was consulted before its transmission. It does not reference the standing reporting infrastructure the Commission maintains in Tirana. It treats Tabaku’s account as the relevant source on questions concerning parliamentary functioning, executive transparency, and opposition participation in the integration process, without testing those claims against the Mission’s institutional reading of the same questions.

The May 9 statements articulate that institutional reading. The Mission operates with full professionalism and integrity. Its work is the authoritative reference point for the European Union’s assessment of the country. This is not the private view of one ambassador or one capital. It is the formally articulated, collectively expressed institutional position of every EU member state ambassador accredited to Albania, reinforced from Brussels.

These two positions create a procedural inconsistency that now requires clarification. Either the Mission’s institutional reading is reliable, in which case the May 7 letter requires explanation as to why its premise rests on the contrary, or the Mission’s institutional reading is to be supplemented or corrected from external sources, in which case the AFET Chair holds a position at variance with the collective assessment of the European Union’s diplomatic presence in Albania, and is procedurally obligated to articulate the grounds on which he holds that position.

The question is sharpened, not softened, by the events of May 9. Sali Berisha called the Ambassador a liar in substance. The European Union answered, collectively and on the record, that the Ambassador acts with full professionalism and integrity. McAllister did not call the Ambassador a liar. Two days earlier, he sent a letter whose institutional premise is that the Mission’s reading of Albania needs correction from an Albanian opposition source.

The register differs from Berisha’s.

The structural premise does not.

This is the question Chairman McAllister has to answer. Does he stand behind the institutional position articulated by the European Union’s Mission in Albania and by the EU member state ambassadors accredited to the country, that the Mission’s reading is authoritative and its work is conducted with full professionalism and integrity? If he does, he is obligated to explain the procedural basis on which his letter of May 7 was transmitted without reference to that reading. If he does not, he is obligated to state so, and to articulate the grounds on which he assesses the collective institutional position of the European Union in Albania as one requiring correction from a single opposition parliamentarian.

The integrity of the European Parliament’s engagement with the Enlargement process depends on the procedural standards being applied uniformly. When an inconsistency between an AFET Chair’s formal act and the collective institutional position of the Union’s presence on the ground becomes visible on the public record, the procedurally appropriate response is clarification, not silence.

The clarification is owed.

Albatros Rexhaj is an author, playwright, and analyst with a background in national-security studies and nearly three decades of experience with international organisations dealing with political and security affairs.

READ ALSO: The procedural record and the verification standard: a legal reading of two letters from Brussels and the institutional response from Tirana