The EC’s annual progress report on Albania comes as Edi Rama’s government increasingly restricts peaceful protest through a series of decree-laws that target demonstrators and anyone in the vicinity of public spaces that, in the government’s eyes, might become sites of protest.
While recognizing the so-called Flamingo Revolution as “the largest civic mobilization since Albania’s democratic transition” and acknowledging its demands for transparency, accountability, and good governance, the Report overlooks the political conditions behind its escalation. In particular, it fails to link students’ return to protests in October to the government’s repressive response to peaceful mobilization and the systematic narrowing of space for dissent, which sits uneasily with its own assessment that civil society operates in a “partly enabling environment.”
By calling on all sides to engage in “constructive dialogue,” the EC frames the crisis as a breakdown in communication between ostensibly equal parties, disregarding the asymmetry between a government that controls the state apparatus and citizens demanding accountability. It also fails to confront the growing use of coercive and legal instruments to suppress dissent, including the criminalization of protest. While calling for investigations into police misconduct, it offers little scrutiny of the government’s political responsibility for endorsing police brutality, including against journalists.
The Commission is more forthright about the environmental grievances that initially sparked the protests. Under Chapter 27, it links deteriorating nature protection to the government’s 2024 amendments to the Law on Protected Areas and to the extension of the Strategic Investment framework. It also cites SPAK investigations into developments in the Pishë Poro–Narta protected landscape, particularly in Zvërnec, involving property-title transfers and possible links to organized crime, including international drug trafficking and money laundering. These findings expose how weakened environmental safeguards accommodate controversial investment interests, which are entangled with criminal investigations. The issue therefore extends beyond environmental governance to the rule of law’s capacity to constrain overlapping political, economic, and criminal interests.
Similar contradictions arise in assessing judicial independence. The Commission acknowledges undue influence by senior officials and politicians, as well as personal attacks on magistrates. The government’s confrontation with judicial governing councils over judicial salaries, along with the political backlash following the suspension of former Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku and SPAK’s request to lift her parliamentary immunity, illustrate executive resistance to judicial autonomy.
These findings reveal a central contradiction in Albania’s rule-of-law reform: while EU-driven processes formally strengthen judicial institutions, their autonomy remains vulnerable to political pressure and executive interference. A similar deficit characterizes Parliament and electoral reform. Although the Commission considers reform urgent ahead of the 2027 local elections, the drafting committee excludes all opposition parties beyond the main opposition, thereby reproducing the lack of inclusiveness the reform should address.
Ultimately, the Report’s most revealing feature is its reluctance to confront the implications of its findings. By treating accession primarily as a geopolitical imperative, the EU risks prioritizing the appearance of reform over democratic transformation, rewarding formal compliance even as power remains concentrated and accountability erodes. Its continued endorsement of Rama as a reliable partner overlooks how his governing practices undermine the democratic transformation that accession is supposed to advance.
The EU must move beyond reliance on a stabilitocratic incumbent and engage with Albania’s broader democratic landscape, including emerging opposition forces and civil society. With broad support for EU membership and accelerated accession, Brussels has both leverage and responsibility. The question is whether it will use them to advance democratic transformation or to legitimize a government that delivers reforms on paper while consolidating authoritarianism in practice.