According to European Commission statistics, the next wave of EU enlargement will occur in 2025 and the countries benefiting will be Montenegro and Serbia. While the same document expects Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo to start the negotiations process in the same period.
In Albania, this news became very little known, mainly through media outlets outside the control of government and little else. No one reacted, no one commented, and so another event that damaged the country went unnoticed. I say another event because in 27 years many governments have acted against the interests of Albania and its citizens, but the reaction has been minimal, almost non-existent.
Here I do not want to comment why a small republic like Montenegro, with all its looming problems, is succeeding in the integration process, making its citizen’s dreams come true, and I’m not even commenting how Serbia, which throughout a decade was directly involved in the wars of former Yugoslavia, is being integrated quicker than us. My point is, how come a nation pretending to be the most pro-European in the region doesn’t react.
I don’t quite remember the time, but I believe it was 1995, when for the first time a poll was conducted among Albanian citizens aimed at seeing their optimism towards the European integration. The result was at first surprising for everyone with an approximate 95–96% of the surveyed wanting Albania to be a part of the European Community, what now is the European Union. Recent surveys, have found a decrease of Albanians in support of integration, but regardless, it still remains high, approximately 92–93 %.
Compared with Serbia for example, in a survey in 2012, only 47% of the population favored European integration, Albanians unquestionably have a bigger desire for integration in EU. However this huge desire contradicts the reality. The Albanian governments, especially Rama’s Renaissance government, have undermined the road and the huge desire of Albanians for European integration, leaving them far behind and in the unknown. Even though this is happening again I am not seeing any reaction from the citizens. In a country with such a desire to be integrated in Europe, as the surveys indicate, much less should suffice to bring down with protests the government standing in our way.
