Albania has weakened its relations with Kosovo over the past three years, and strengthened them with Serbia, according to the European Commission’s October 2020 progress report on Albania.
A comparison of reports over the last three years shows that the European Commission has downgraded its assessment of relations with Kosovo from “very good” to “good”. Meanwhile, its assessment of relations with Serbia has been upgraded from “strengthening of business cooperation” to overall “good relations”.
The European Commission has the same assessment for the current level of Albania’s relations with Kosovo and Serbia, namely “good relations”.
“Overall, Albania continues to have good relations with Kosovo,” the 2020 report states. Its assessment in 2018 and 2019 for the same relations are “very good”.
The deterioration coincides with the coming to power of the Kurti Government and the disagreements between leaders in Kosovo and the Rama Government regarding the Mini-Schengen initiative launched by Albania, Serbia and North Macedonia’s leaders. This period was also dominated by discussions on the resumption of the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, after the idea of land swaps pushed forward by Kosovo and Serbia’s presidents failed.
“[…]the momentum of these relations fluctuated due to internal political dynamics in Albania and Kosovo, and to the positioning of respective leadership on the EU-facilitated Dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina,” the report noted.
Prime Ministers Rama and Kurti did not agree on the best way of cooperation between them. Rama insisted that they should focus on the Mini-Schengen area, while Kurti stressed that they should strengthen Kosovo-Albania cooperation.
The opposite happened with relations between the governments of Albania and Serbia, according to the report. In 2018, “the relationship with Serbia continued through the strengthening of business cooperation.” In 2019, “the relationship with Serbia remained overall positive. Then in 2020, the EC report noted more improvement and assessed relations as overall good.
“Relations with Serbia are good. Leaders of both countries regularly meet in the framework of regional and international events,” it said.
Vučić is the country leader with whom Rama has met most frequently in his 7-year rule. Many of these meetings had the Mini-Schengen initiative in focus.
This article was translated by Exit Staff from Exit News in Albanian.
