When I hear the Slovenian politician Tanja Fajon coming to Tirana and saying that Albania can be in the EU by 2030, I think that even this date is impossible precisely because Europe is full of weightless politicians like Tanja Fajon, who speak without knowing what they are saying. 
If I had the chance, I would like to ask her why she thinks that Albania can be part of the EU in 2030 and not in 2028? Or why not in 2035? What does Tanja Fajon expect us to do by 2030 that we cannot do in 2028 or 2027? 
Tanja Fajon naturally has no answer, and she cannot have one. 

Like her, the EU today has hundreds of featherweight politicians who make a career by participating in seminars where no decisions are made, and where no one is held accountable for what they say. Someone who knows these types of politicians well once told me that for them, no action is action. Tanja Fajon is typical of a generation of politicians for whom inaction is action. 
But that's not the main issue, and I don't want to dwell on it. No one can choose the time they live in. The problem is not Tanja, but Europe, which has fallen into the hands of people like Tanja. 
The Europe we know after the 1990s can be divided into three periods. In the first, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe made the right decisions, one of which was the accession of Slovenia, Tanja Fajon's country, to the European Union on May 1, 2004—almost 20 years ago. 
In the second period, which was dominated by Angela Merkel, Europe made decisions, despite many of them being wrong, such as inflating the Greek crisis, to strengthen Germany and weaken everyone else, which took Britain out of Madhe, which rightly could not stand the German domination of Europe. 
And in the third era, the time we live in, the problem is even bigger. Europe no longer makes any decisions. If the politicians who are leading today were in power in 2004, probably Tanja Fajon herself would not have voted for Slovenia, her country, to become a member of the European Union. 

This doesn't mean that the Tanj?s don't care about Slovenia or Albania. It means that procrastination—avoiding decisions—is the most prominent characteristic of Europeans today. Europeans are not making decisions today, whether it's about Ukraine, immigration, Israel, Hamas, or EU expansion. How can we then expect them to make a decision regarding Albania? 
As soon as one issue is resolved, another emerges. When the second issue starts to be addressed, elections come around, and if you haven't properly resolved the first issue, you risk losing the election. So, the key to political survival in Europe is to open all issues and not close any. 
That's why immigrants flock but don't integrate in Europe, why the war in Ukraine drags on, why the economy is always in decline, why Kosovo and Serbia can't find peace, why there's no expansion—and maybe there won't be for a long time. 
If Europe once had strategies, some of which failed and therefore turned into tactics, now there are none—only techniques. These can be called electoral techniques, which mean that doing nothing wins more easily. 
More precisely, the ability to invent crises is more popular than the ability to solve them. So, every crisis is followed by another, and then another, making living in crisis the new normal. 
Emmanuel Macron is the king of this technique without substance, which can be understood as: pretend to do a lot while doing nothing. Macron's constant pirouette between left and right in Europe is now called constructive liberalism. This is the latest fashion in Europe, resembling a walk on heels before a fall. 
Now that I recall Slovenia became a member of the EU 20 years ago, I believe some comparisons are valid. Anyone who knows even a little about this wonderful mountainous country—from which great NBA basketball players, American first ladies, or Marxist philosophers like Slavoj Žižek emerge from time to time—cannot convince me that the difference between Slovenia and Albania is almost 30 years. 
Slovenia is undoubtedly a better-governed country than Albania in the last 100 years and no doubt in the last 30 years, but its great fortune was that it did not get involved in the internal conflicts of Yugoslavia. Unlike what happened in Croatia, the war between Serbia and Slovenia lasted only 10 days in 1991 and can hardly be called a war, because no more than 20 soldiers were killed. 
Croatia, the twin country of Slovenia, burned in the inferno of Yugoslavia's disintegration and barely came out of there, to join the EU almost ten years later in 2013. 

In Europe, there is probably no country that resembles Albania more than Slovenia. They have 2.1 million inhabitants; we have 2.4 million. They are a country with a small outlet to the Adriatic; we have the largest outlet after Italy. They have many forests and mountains as we do. They have as much snow as we do, but we have far fewer skiers. They don't share a border with Serbia, and neither do we. They are in NATO, and so are we. They had 6 million tourists last year, and we believe we had 7 million. Of course, they have a gross domestic product almost four times larger than ours, but considering that they have been members of the EU for 20 years, this difference is not as big as it seems. 
So, what more should we do to be part of the EU like Slovenia? What have we not done since 2004, when Slovenia became a member of the EU, that Tanja Fajon thinks gives her the right to set the date for our accession? 
They asked us not to claim a single lost square meter in the Balkans, and we complied. They asked us to discourage the union of Kosovo with Albania, and we do it every day without hesitation. They invaded us without giving us any reparations, and we accepted it. They asked us to be hostile to Russia, and we complied. They asked us to reject Chinese investments, and we stubbornly did so, even though they themselves did not. We were asked to send soldiers to Afghanistan, where we had no reason to be, and we did. They asked us to close the market to Easterners, and we complied. They asked us to lower the prices of our agricultural products, and we did. They have taken most of our natural resources or destroyed them, putting them out of business, and we accepted it. They have limited our fishing quotas in the Adriatic, and we accepted it. They asked us to build a special court, which they are running themselves, and we agreed. They appointed the judges and prosecutors themselves, and we accepted. They monitor our elections and tell us how we should conduct them, and we accept. They asked us to change our laws and not to adopt laws that could favor our market, and we complied. 
So, what more do we have to do to be treated like the Slovenians? 

*Albanian writer, former journalist, MP and Minister; the opinions expressed are the author’s only