Albania opened Cluster 1, consisting of five negotiating chapters, with the European Union at today’s intergovernmental conference. Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama assessed that the war in Ukraine had renewed momentum for enlargement and stated that the goal of his country was to finish the process by the end of the decade.

Albania has joined Montenegro and Serbia as the third Western Balkan candidate country to open negotiating chapters. It formally opened accession talks together with North Macedonia in July 2022.

The Council of the European Union, currently presided over by Hungary, adopted the European Union Common Position, laying out the conditions Albania is required to meet in the areas covered by Cluster 1.

Cluster 1: Fundamentals, consists of five negotiating chapters: Chapter 5 – Public procurement, Chapter 18 – Statistics, Chapter 23 – Judiciary and fundamental rights, Chapter 24 – Justice, freedom and security and Chapter 32 – Financial control. There are 33 negotiating chapters in total, divided into six clusters.

Cluster 1 also contains three criteria which are not organized into chapters: Functioning of democratic institutions, Public administration reform and Economic criteria.

According to the current enlargement methodology, Cluster 1: Fundamentals is opened first and closed last. The progress in these areas determines the overall pace of the negotiations.

In the press conference that followed the EU-Albania intergovernmental conference, Edi Rama said that there was a new momentum in the EU enlargement policy.

“Unfortunately, and I can’t avoid saying this, it was with the help of Vladimir Putin that this process got a new speed. The aggression of Ukraine served as a wake-up call for the EU and highlighted that it needs the Western Balkans as much as the Balkans need the EU”, Rama said.

He said that the goal of Albania is to complete the negotiating process within this decade and be ready to “knock at the door of the European Council” as a member state.

“And this is very ambitious. It takes a very large volume of work. We have set a very ambitious roadmap with the Commission and we count on friends and partners to help us achieve it”, Rama said.

He also spoke about the reforms his government enacted to get to this phase.

“For the first time in our history, we are seeing high-level political figures being indicted and convicted in front of an independent court of law regardless of their ties to the ruling party or others… Our justice institutions, a product of the most thorough justice reforms ever taken by an EU candidate country, are making remarkable progress”, Rama said.

The outgoing Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi also spoke at the press conference, where he supported the idea of accepting new member states by the end of the next Commission’s mandate.

“Compared to where we started in 2019, we have come a long way. What I have inherited from the Juncker Commission was more like a car crash than a portfolio. We had three attempts to start accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia. We had to put enlargement from his head to its feet again, then deal with the real integration – meaning how we are going to get similar economies, and societies embedded in the Western Balkans even before accession takes place, to make it possible that by the end of the mandate of the next Commission we will also see Prime Minister Rama nominating his first Commissioner”, Várhelyi said.

Asked about the reforms of the European Union as a pre-condition for enlargement, Várhelyi said that the Commission had been very clear that the current institutional setup is capable for accepting new members, and that the two processes – enlargement and internal reform – should run in parallel.

According to Várhelyi, the preparation of the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework for the period 2027-2034 will be a good indication of whether the EU will welcome new members.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, Péter Szijjártó, who attended the press conference on behalf of the Hungarian Presidency, said that there is a possibility for Albania to open another cluster of chapters by the end of the year, namely Cluster 6: External relations, “if everybody does their job in a fair and appropriate way”.

Szijjártó stressed that the issue of the acceleration of the EU enlargement towards the Western Balkan region has been at the top of the agenda of the Hungarian Presidency.

“This is a true European interest. On the other hand, we have to take urgent steps in order to maintain the credibility of the enlargement policy. We have to understand that enlargement policy has lost credibility in recent times given that the average waiting time in the Western Balkans has exceeded 15 years”, he said.