EU opens accession negotiations with Albania

Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Conference on accession negotiations was held with Albania. This process started on 24 April 2009, when Albania applied for EU membership and since June 2014 Albania has been an official candidate for accession.?

In 2018, the Commission issued an unconditional recommendation to open accession negotiations which set out the path towards opening accession negotiations in June 2019. In March 2020 the members of the European Council endorsed the General Affairs Council’s decision to open accession negotiations with Albania and recently the Commission started the screening process.

Community Acquis

As a candidate country, Albania is required to adapt the administrative and institutional infrastructures and to bring the national legislation into line with EU legislation. The acquis is the “body of common rights and obligations that is binding on all the EU member states”, to which Albania must align its legal and political system, in order for accession to be approved. Derogations from the acquis are granted only in exceptional circumstances and are limited in scope.??

Negotiation Chapters

The chapters of the acquis (presently 35) form the basis of the accession negotiations for each candidate country. They correspond to the different areas of the acquis for which reforms are needed in order to meet the accession conditions.?

Albania is required to adapt its administrative and institutional infrastructure and to bring its national legislation into line with EU legislation in these areas. The different chapters are reviewed during the screening of the acquis and are evaluated regularly up until the time each chapter is closed.

The cluster on fundamentals reform will be the first to open and last to close, as it concerns the pivotal topic of the rule of law, economic criteria and public administration which can only be established with the closing of the rest of the chapters.?

The pace of the negotiations depends on the speed of reform and alignment with EU laws.

Who benefits?

• From now on, Albania will be able to benefit even more from the “Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance” (IPA), which disbursed 12.8 billion EUR between 2014 and 2020, of which Albania received 639.5 million, while 14.2 billion euro Pre-accession financial assistance funding is foreseen for the period 2021-2027 in favor of the Republic of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Turkey.
• From an economic perspective, the opening of accession negotiations encourages foreign investments and, as a result, leads to job creation.
• In light of Human Rights, the EU Delegation provides recognition and support to civil society actors actively working for the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Albania, including funding opportunities and public awareness activities. In this regard, the EU Delegation provides financial support to civil society organizations under a number of instruments.
• Furthermore, Albanians will have greater opportunities for education and training within the EU, to facilitate the improvement of professional ability in the country in line with EU standards.

After the close of the last chapter in negotiations, Albania and the EU member states will jointly sign the accession treaty that will see the country become part of the EU family.

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