After meeting with Prime Minister Rama yesterday, Gunther Krichbaum, Chairman of the EU Affairs Commission in the Bundestag, wrote on his Facebook page:
Yesterday I welcomed the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama […] I used this opportunity to tell him personally that I believe the opening of the accession negotiations to enter the EU is still too early. The reforms in Albania have not gone far enough yet.
This statement confirms that Kirchbaum’s stance on the opening of the negotiations remains negative, even after meeting Rama.
Immediately after the European Commission recommended the opening of accession negotiations with Albania, the German MP declared in an interview with Deutsche Welle that “the European Commission’s recommendation […] is not enough.”
Krichbaum expressed the same sentiment during an interview with Tagespiegel on March 20, where he stated that it is still too early to open the negotiations, adding that “corruption and high levels of organized crime remain a problem.”
In a press conference given after his visit, Prime Minister Edi Rama dismissed Krichbaum as “one of the I don’t know how many hundreds members of the Bundestag. That’s the weight of his opinion.”
