EU Organizes Promo Tour for Journalists, But Leaves Out Failures

The EU Delegation in Albania has rented a bus and has embarked on its own “press trip” throughout Albania to highlight EU-funded projects while also doing some “capacity building” with local and national journalists on how to report on EU integration issues.

Locations visited were the Archeological Park of Apollonia in Fier, an EU Desk in Lushnja, and a water supply and sewerage project in Fier.

It is unclear whether the journalists tagged by the EU Delegation in a tweet from Top Channel, Ora News, TVSh, Balkanweb, Gazeta Tema, RTV Scan, and ATA, all large media channels linked to or directed by the government, were also instructed about investigative methods used to uncover the large-scale mismanagement of EU-funded projects.

Only recently, Exit reported on an EU-funded IT system for the public administration that continues to be non-functional. In the past, we also covered the enormous problems with the water supply and sewerage system projects in Kavaja, Shëngjin, and Ksamil – all part of the same project as the one in Fier. Furthermore, Exit continues to investigate the public procurement procedure around the acquisition of the villa of EU Ambassador Romana Vlahutin. Naturally, the EU Delegation chose to transport its bus full of journalists to the one city where the project didn’t completely derail.

The government-allied journalists will also be invited on a “study visit to EU institutions in Brussels aiming at increasing the Albanian journalists’ knowledge about European Institution[s] and EU policies.”

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