Future enlargement of Europe: Albania case, population attitudes towards membership (2004-2016)

Abstract

Enlargement is a key transformational force, inspiring democratic change and economic liberalization among those who wish to join. It is at the heart of the EU’s soft power to extend the zone of peace, stability and prosperity on the continent. The appeal of the EU has been instrumental in the peaceful democratic transformation of Central and Eastern Europe and it remains the driving force for the reforms in the Western Balkans and in Turkey. Western Balkan countries surrounded by EU members states turned their hopes towards European membership. Momentarily the enlargement process in this region is frozen due to different reasons (necessity of EU internal reformation, complexities of the region, implementation of a new enlargement strategy and approach). The region feels that there is a lack of vision and they perceive that conditionality tool isn’t that effective in bringing major changes and that the ‘regional approach’ has created problems. It is very important to go back and draw the characteristic of enlargement strategy between CEE enlargement strategy and Western Balkan strategy with the clear purpose in finding the origin of this issues. Albania got its candidate status in 2014, however no chapters were opened so far and the political elites push for ‘stabilocracy’, preferences are for stability rather than maintaining democratic standards. Compared with other Western Balkan countries, Albania is unique in some directions and we want to analyze its characteristics and developments in order to explain the backwardness of the country’s accession process. Even though the EU’s conditionality and leverage in the country has weakened there is still a massive support for accession. The analyzes of the Albanian citizen towards the EU integration suggests a number of interesting implications and outcomes like: non-economic judgments of the domestic political process are put ahead of the utilitarian judgements. Albanians citizens rely mostly on cues from domestic politics factors to form their attitudes about EU membership. European Union in accordance to the current developments of the country is seen as the only solution, is not questioned and citizens haven’t yet come close enough to the accession in order to form ‘critical’ opinion towards membership. Support remains higher in countries with lower opportunity costs of transferring sovereignty to the EU and Albania has more to gain then lose in this process. The future of ‘enlargement’ does not seem clear from the Western Balkan region view, it is shaken by the EU: economic crisis, enlargement fatigues, accession fatigue and Brexit. Analyzing the importance and origin of such a process (between CEE and Western Balkan/Albanian case) may through some light in the upcoming challenges of enlargement strategy. Trace the developments of Albania-EU relations from (2000 to present). Explore the institutionalist mechanism that have been used to foster this relationship as it may indicate possible future directions for EU-Western Balkan policies. Albanian-EU relations are excellent case-study for analyzing both strategies of transition states in developing their external relations and the development of the EU’s external relations with countries in its regional sphere of influence. The Western Balkan is not a homogenous region with uniform views of Europe so the ‘Albanian’ case expels us the huge work on showing a vast range of perceptions about the EU at a country-level. Review of records and reports and data collection. Parts of this research include indicators and findings from analyzing of the data, evaluation of reports, national and international studies on this subject.