It seems that within the last 24 hours, the “solution” to the crises in the Balkan countries has been found. Following back-to-back meetings and international pressure – Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hoyt Brian Yee, EU Representative Federica Mogherini, Commissioner Johannes Hahn, European People’s Party Vice-President David McAllister, MEP Knut Fleckenstein, and EU and US ambassadors
The front page of the cultural supplement of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera today features an enlargement of one of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s doodles, with which he also papered a wall at the current Venice Biennial, curated by COD board member Christine Macel. What is remarkable is that the doodle features Rama’s official
US Deputy Assistant Secretary Hoyt Brian Yee will arrive today in Tirana as part of his tour through the Western Balkans region. His visit will be yet another attempt of the international community to arrive at a “compromise” between Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government and the opposition led by PD leader Lulzim Basha. In Montenegro,
Similarly to when I was in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum a couple years ago – where I discovered the seventeenth-century paintings of Albanians by the excellent painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour, I made another great find when I was in Brussels in 2015 – the capital of the EU and the arts world with renowned names
Five Losers 1. The Democratic Party (PD) and Lulzim Basha It now seems that the PD will not take part in the elections. As it looks right now, a few weeks from today it will find itself outside Parliament and outside any other state institution, except for a few municipalities, for the majority unimportant ones. With no way
There is a moment in Adam Curtis’s documentary Bitter Lake in which the narrator (Curtis) talks about the ideals that brought both the Soviets and Americans to Afghanistan: to create a state based on their respective principles and ideologies, to create an ally in the region, to change the country in their likeness. But, Curtis concludes ironically, little did
In an interview with Politico, Prime Minister Rama repeats his mantra that “The Balkans need Europe and Europe needs the Balkans,” while keeping the door open for a “Greater Albania” should the EU withdraw.
A recently published report of the The Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, a joint initiative of the European Fund for the Balkans and the Centre for Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz, Austria, under the title The Crisis of Democracy in the Western Balkans: Authoritarianism and EU Stabilitocracy sketches a somber outlook for democracy
Picture a port city where hundreds of ships arrive every day carrying goods from as far away as Alexandria, Egypt, where trade and commerce is flourishing, and where emperors are entertained watching plays in the amphitheater seating some 20,000 spectators. Durrës was a glorious city. Some 35 kilometers away from the capital city of Tirana,
Director of the Soros-founded Open Society Initiative for Europe, Goran Buldioski, issued a reply against the “conspiracy theories on Capitol Hill” in US magazine Foreign Policy. He calls upon Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to ignore the letter of six US senators, in which they call upon the Secretary to investigate links between the Soros