Ivis Noçka
In order to meet the strict conditions of EU membership, the Western Balkans, including Albania have been required to undertake drastic re-forms in its political, economic, and legal systems. As a result, the do-mestic reform program is largely dictated from abroad and the legislative process is guided by the arduous task of transferring an ever-expanding of thousands pages of EU laws and regulations known as the Acquis communautaire into national’s domestic law. These laws cover a multi-tude of diverse fields, including competition laws, social policies, prod-uct standards, agriculture, telecommunication, energy, the environment, intellectual property, civil law, company law, and consumer protection.
As Albanian Prime Minister Berisha stated, “Candidate status means hundreds of millions of euro of free investments from the European Commission, for roads, schools, hospitals in order for Albanians to live and have the infrastructure of European citizens”. Therefore, one cannot understand Albanian’s domestic politics without considering the EU influence on this process.
The objective of joining the EU has also influenced Albania’s regional relations. The desire for EU membership has created a dual objective for the Albanian government of situating itself firmly as part of the “West”, while also building good relations and strengthening ties with its neighbours in South Eastern Europe (SEE). Albania’s NATO member-ship process took too much time when compared to the other Eastern European countries due to the inherited weaknesses since the independ-ence days.
Albania was a weak country from the economic perspective, and had security concerns emanating from the territorial claims of neighbouring countries. The support for NATO integration was about 90% among the population according to the survey by the Institute for Democracy and
Mediation in May 2007. At the April 2008 Bucharest summit, with the strong US backing, Albania together with Croatia was invited to the ac-cession talks as a final step to full membership. As of April 1, 2009, Al-bania has been the full member of NATO. According to Berisha, it was the most important event in his country’s history since gaining inde-pendence in 1912.
Regional cooperation is instrumental in addressing the security chal-lenges facing the Balkan region, since many serious issues, such as or-ganized crime and corruption, the spread of illegal weapons or integrated border management and illegal migration, can be effectively addressed only by a trans-border approach.
Concerted actions are considered as indispensable, not just as an end in itself but also a signal to the rest of Europe that all the western Balkan countries share the EU’s and NATO conditions on this issue.
Regional cooperation can lead to tangible results in the field of security and justice with freedom for the people living in the region, while at the same time meeting the concerns of EU citizens. Efforts to address the criminal threats to the stabilization and development of the region, as to the very security of the EU, will only be successful if the western Balkan countries and the EU work together to fight corruption and trans-national organised crime, which prevents legitimate economic growth and un-dermines democratic rule and democratic stability in the region.
The negative perception of the regional security environment by ele-ments of local political elites is detrimental to the formation of national security agendas. Reform of the security sector throughout the region is often not seen as a key domestic priority, but must instead be forced from the outside, mainly through the EU and NATO membership condi-tionality. Security cooperation is largely externally driven and disowned by local elites, instead of being seen as an opportunity for a systematic response to common security threats.
Creating good neighbours – meeting EU conditions
Albania’s focus on Euro-Atlantic integration from the very start of its transition might have led the country to ignore its neighbours, especially given initial conditions. Economically, Albania was almost completely isolated from both Eastern and Western Europe so there were no signifi-cant ties with neighbours to build upon. Indeed, the EU (in particular Italy, Germany, Greece) quickly became the country’s largest trading partner and now accounts for over 65% of Albania’s exports and 60% of its imports. Politically, Albania’s relations with her neighbours Greece, Macedonia, Kosova and Montenegro have not suffered from unresolved border disputes and minority rights concerns. These facts have increased the border relations with Albania’s neighbours much more than have been expected.
The good-neighbourly relations are one of the preconditions of EU as well as to NATO membership. France’s ex European affairs minister, Alain Lamassoure, noted that “admission [to the EU] is only possible for countries that maintain good relations with their neighbours. No country with unsettled border or minority conflicts will be allowed to join.”
Thus, the settling of any disputes and the signing of friendship and co-operation treaties with neighbours have become a necessary precondition for EU membership.
It seems plausible that economic growth, public security and social or-ganization depend on each other. Economic growth is not possible with-out a certain level of social organization and a measure of peace and stability in a given society. Indeed, higher levels of economic develop-ment require more sophisticated forms of social organization, which in turn need a high level of public security and stability.
However plausible all this may seem, we need to bear in mind that some of these concepts are not clear enough to be operational. The processes going on between them are not simple or automatic-other factors inter-vene. Nor are the relationships necessarily linear: an increase at one point of the triangle will not always result in a commensurate increase at the other two.
The Albanian government is doing as much as it can to address the issue domestically and to liaise with international organizations to ensure eco-nomic sustainability.
The strong desire of Western Balkan countries for EU membership pro-vided the EU with an opportunity to strengthen security and stability in a potentially unstable region in its own backyard. If and when EU mem-bership would be granted, it was also in the interest of the EU Member States to have border and other disputes between new members already resolved, so as not to weaken the ability to fully cooperate within the organization.
The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe in itself provided a frame-work for cooperation on a variety of issues in order to foster peace, sta-bility, and economic development in the region. Its three Working Ta-bles addressed democracy and civil society, economic development, and internal and external security. At the Stability Pact Summit in Sarajevo in July 1999, President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland stated that “the ability of countries within the region to cooperate and establish good-neighbourly relations as well as to achieve reconciliation within and be-tween themselves will be an important criterion for evaluating their prospects of full integration with the European Union.” At the end the Stability Pact and its successor organisation, the Regional Cooperation Council, were a test for regional cooperation that every EU candidate must pass.