Albania and EU Enlargement: Can Europe Deliver on Its Western Balkans Promise?
- Lisa Burke
- 16 hours ago
- 10 min read
Albania is racing towards EU membership. Ferit Hoxha and Petras Auštrevičius examine enlargement, reform, Kosovo, Bosnia and the security cost of keeping the Western Balkans waiting.
Twenty-three years after the European Union promised the Western Balkans a European future, Albania is suddenly moving at speed.
The obvious question is whether Albania can complete the reforms required to join the EU.
The more uncomfortable question is whether Europe can deliver when it does.
That question ran through my conversation with Ferit Hoxha, Albania's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs at the time of our interview, and Petras Auštrevičius MEP, the European Parliament's standing rapporteur on enlargement strategy and the man who previously led Lithuania's own EU accession negotiations.
We talked about Albania's sprint through the accession process, the extraordinary complexity of joining the EU, the politics of Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russian and Chinese influence, and something Europe perhaps discusses rather less enthusiastically: the reforms the European Union itself may need before it grows again.
Watch the full conversation
The Lisa Burke Show: Albania, EU Enlargement and the Western Balkans
What you need to know
Albania has become one of the fastest-moving candidates for EU membership.
The accession process now groups negotiations into six clusters covering 33 chapters for Albania, with the Fundamentals cluster central to progress.
Rule of law, the judiciary, fundamental rights, corruption, media freedom and environmental standards remain critical areas of reform.
Albania argues that a merit-based process must reward countries when they meet agreed conditions.
Petras Auštrevičius favours a "regatta" model, allowing candidates to advance according to their individual performance.
Enlargement now carries a much sharper security dimension because of war in Ukraine and geopolitical competition around Europe.
Both guests argue that the EU must also prepare itself institutionally for future enlargement.
A promise one generation old
In 2003, at Thessaloniki, the European Union gave the Western Balkans a European destination.
Croatia joined in 2013. Then the momentum slowed.
A generation has now grown up beneath that promise.
For years enlargement could be filed somewhere between technical policy, distant aspiration and tomorrow's problem. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the temperature. Suddenly the political vacuum around the Western Balkans mattered differently.
Who fills it while Europe waits?
Who invests? Who influences? Who supplies infrastructure, information and political loyalties?
And at what point does delay itself become a security policy?
Hoxha told me that Albania used the waiting years to prepare.
"In the waiting time, we just didn't watch the stars. We worked." Ferit Hoxha
That preparation matters because joining the European Union involves one of the most extraordinary exercises in institutional transformation a government can undertake.
Auštrevičius remembers Lithuania's accession process vividly. The EU's body of law, the acquis communautaire, ran to around 120,000 pages even then.
His point was more interesting than the size of the pile.
Accession happens on paper, in ministries, courts and legislation. It also happens in businesses, institutions and people's minds. Governments have to explain what they are doing, bring citizens with them and prepare an entire country to operate inside a different political and economic system.
For Lithuania, he described the transformation as moving from watching Europe's team play to playing for Europe.
Albania's accession sprint
Albania opened its first negotiating cluster in October 2024. Hoxha told me that it subsequently opened all six clusters and 33 chapters in just eleven months.
It then passed the interim benchmarks associated with the critical Fundamentals cluster, allowing it to move towards closing chapters.
That speed gives Albania momentum. It does not give Albania a free pass.
The difficult work includes the judiciary, rule of law, corruption, fundamental rights, media freedom and environmental protection. Some reforms can be legislated comparatively quickly. Building institutions capable of enforcing them is another matter entirely.
Hoxha put the accession process rather neatly:
"The negotiation is about the gap." Ferit Hoxha
Where is the country now? Where does it have to get to? What lies between those two positions, and how will it cross the distance?
Environmental reform illustrates the difficulty. Protecting biodiversity, upgrading infrastructure, changing administrative systems and implementing European standards can demand years of work, significant expertise and considerable money.
Accession therefore becomes an unusual race in which speed matters enormously, while some of the most important evidence of reform can only emerge with time.
The regatta or the convoy?
Auštrevičius gave me one of the most useful ways of understanding the enlargement debate.
Imagine two models.
In a convoy, everyone travels at the speed of the slowest member.
In a regatta, everyone receives the rules and the course, then progresses according to individual performance.
He strongly favours the second.
"To be first, it's good, but you have to be the best. What is promised must be implemented."Petras Auštrevičius
This matters because we casually talk about "the Western Balkans" as though six countries constitute one political problem.
They do not.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia have different governments, histories, disputes, reforms and relationships with the European Union.
If Albania fulfils an agreed condition, should its progress depend upon political failures somewhere else?
Auštrevičius says no.
Individual performance should matter.
Merit has to work both ways
Then Hoxha pushed the idea one stage further.
Candidates are repeatedly told that EU accession must remain merit-based. They accept commitments, change laws, reform institutions and submit themselves to scrutiny.
But credibility depends upon what happens next.
"When we say merit-based, it has to work on both ends."Ferit Hoxha
If a country does what has been agreed, Hoxha argues, the European Union also has to move.
Otherwise governments asking their populations to endure difficult reforms face a fairly obvious question from voters:
What exactly are all these sacrifices buying us?
This is where enlargement stops being an administrative exercise and becomes a question of political trust.
The window, Hoxha believes, will not remain open indefinitely.
"Don't lose a moment, don't lose a minute, don't lose an hour. Work, work, work."Ferit Hoxha
There is striking urgency in that sentence.
Albania is racing through its homework because geopolitics can change faster than a negotiating chapter can close.
Can countries start joining Europe before membership?
One answer may be gradual integration.
Rather than asking candidate countries to wait outside every room until the great day of accession, parts of European integration can arrive earlier.
That can mean deeper participation in the single market and European programmes, payment systems and other practical benefits.
It matters politically because "EU membership" can otherwise remain an abstract promise sitting somewhere years into the future.
A cheaper payment, an easier journey or access to a European programme is something a citizen can actually experience.
Hoxha also raised a more provocative question.
Albania aligns itself with EU foreign and security policy. European sanctions can become Albanian sanctions. European positions influence Albanian positions.
So if a candidate is already implementing some of those decisions, when should it begin sitting in the rooms where those decisions are discussed?
Observer status and gradual institutional participation could also prepare civil servants for the machinery they will one day have to operate.
You learn how a club works rather better from inside the room.
Europe is also choosing what kind of Union it wants
There is a harder geopolitical test sitting beneath all this.
Can a candidate country demand European solidarity, investment and eventual membership while simultaneously moving strategically towards governments hostile to European interests?
Auštrevičius's answer was essentially that accession carries responsibilities as well as benefits.
That question becomes more serious as the EU considers expanding further.
Every new member arrives with a vote, a government, economic interests and foreign-policy relationships. Enlargement therefore has to strengthen the Union's capacity to act.
The choices candidate countries make before membership offer clues about the choices they may make afterwards.
And this reaches beyond the Balkans.
What does alignment with Europe actually mean in an age of Russian aggression, Chinese strategic investment, technological competition and increasingly fractured global politics?
Membership is geography, economics, law, values and power, all bundled rather awkwardly together.
Kosovo, Bosnia and history that refuses to stay in history
Then there are problems that cannot be solved by ticking another box in Brussels.
Kosovo remains outside recognition by five EU member states. Its relationship with Serbia remains unresolved despite years of negotiations and agreements.
Bosnia and Herzegovina presents another extraordinary challenge.
The Dayton Peace Agreement stopped a horrific war. The political architecture that followed also left an exceptionally complicated state in which historical identities and competing centres of power can produce paralysis.
Europe can create incentives.
It can provide money.
It can mediate and cajole.
There are limits, however, to how much political consensus can be engineered from outside.
This is one reason Albania or Montenegro reaching membership could have an effect far beyond their own borders.
For the rest of the region, a new accession would be evidence.
The door moved. Someone actually walked through it.
After more than a decade without a new Western Balkan member, that psychological effect could matter almost as much as the legal one.
And then there is the EU itself
Perhaps the most revealing part of this discussion was that the candidates are not the only ones being asked to change.
A larger European Union has to function.
Auštrevičius argued that the Union should make greater use of qualified-majority voting in intermediate accession decisions, reducing the ability of a single member state to derail years of another country's reforms because of a bilateral disagreement.
The final decision on membership would still require political consent.
But should every intermediate step be vulnerable to a national veto?
It is a deceptively large question.
Europe has spent years examining whether candidate countries are ready for the European Union.
How ready is the European Union for them?
Its budget will have to adapt. Its institutions will have to adapt. Its decision-making may have to adapt.
Perhaps enlargement's next great negotiation is therefore taking place on two sides of the table.
What struck me most
I began these Western Balkans conversations wanting to understand why enlargement had stalled for so long.
I came away thinking about time.
Time feels very different depending on which side of the EU's border you inhabit.
Inside, another summit can pass. Another election. Another year of negotiation.
Outside, twenty-three years is a generation.
And geopolitical empty space has a habit of attracting somebody.
That is why the question surrounding Albania is becoming bigger than Albania.
The country still has serious work to do. Merit matters precisely because membership matters.
But if a candidate reaches the standards Europe has set, Europe eventually has to answer its own question.
Did we keep the promise?
My guests
Ferit Hoxha
At the time of our conversation, Ferit Hoxha was Albania's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, following more than 35 years in Albanian diplomacy.
His career has included serving as Albania's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, leading the Albanian delegation during the country's term on the UN Security Council, twice holding the Council presidency, and serving as ambassador to the European Union and France and Permanent Representative to UNESCO.
Petras Auštrevičius MEP
Petras Auštrevičius is a Lithuanian politician and diplomat and a Member of the European Parliament.
He serves as the European Parliament's standing rapporteur on European enlargement strategy and previously had direct experience of accession from the other side of the table as Lithuania's chief negotiator for EU membership.
This is Part Two of my Western Balkans series
In the first conversation, I spoke with Zoran Dimitrovski and Linas Kojala about the wider geopolitical case for Western Balkan enlargement and what Europe risks when its neighbours remain indefinitely in the waiting room.
READ / WATCH PART ONE:
Building these articles as a connected series will also help readers move between related conversations on European politics, security and geopolitics.
Frequently asked questions
Is Albania a member of the European Union?
No. Albania is an EU candidate country and is negotiating its accession to the European Union.
How far has Albania progressed towards EU membership?
At the time of this interview, Albania had opened all six negotiating clusters covering 33 chapters and had passed the interim benchmarks necessary to move towards the next phase of closing chapters.
What are the EU accession clusters?
The current methodology groups negotiating chapters into six thematic clusters. The Fundamentals cluster covers particularly important areas including the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security and remains central throughout the negotiating process.
When could Albania join the EU?
There is no guaranteed accession date. Albania's stated ambition in this conversation was to conclude negotiations by the end of 2027. Completing negotiations and actually becoming a member are separate steps and depend upon Albania meeting the required conditions and the EU agreeing to accession.
What does "merit-based enlargement" mean?
It means candidate countries should progress according to the reforms and conditions they fulfil rather than automatically moving together as one group. Ferit Hoxha argued in our conversation that merit also requires reciprocity: when candidates deliver agreed reforms, the EU should allow them to advance.
What is the "regatta principle" in EU enlargement?
Petras Auštrevičius used the image of a regatta to describe candidates competing according to the same rules while advancing at their own speed. He contrasted this with a convoy, where everyone is constrained by the slowest performer.
Why does Western Balkan enlargement matter for European security?
The discussion has acquired much greater geopolitical importance since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Enlargement concerns political alignment, economic integration, security and the influence of external powers as well as the technical adoption of EU legislation.
Watch, listen and continue the conversation
This conversation is part of The Lisa Burke Show, where I speak with political leaders, scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and thinkers about the forces reshaping Europe and our world.
Watch the full episode above and explore more conversations on European affairs, science, technology, space, health and society here on lisatoniburke.com.
If this discussion made you think differently about enlargement, I would love to know:
Should countries that fulfil the EU's accession conditions be guaranteed the next step, or should every member state retain the power to stop the process?
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Lisa BurkeBroadcaster | Presenter | International Moderator lisatoniburke.com
Albania has moved through the revised accession system at remarkable speed. It opened all six negotiating clusters within 13 months and has now passed the interim assessment of the Fundamentals cluster, covering the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security. That allows the country to begin the difficult final phase of closing individual chapters, with the ambition of concluding negotiations by the end of 2027. The European Parliament has praised Albania’s momentum while insisting that progress must remain strictly merit-based and that reforms must be implemented, not simply written into law.
The country’s momentum is real, but the remaining work is extensive. Corruption, judicial effectiveness, media freedom, political pressure on journalists and environmental protection all remain under close scrutiny. Albania must show that reforms are durable and that its institutions can enforce the standards they adopt. Environmental rules are particularly demanding because protecting biodiversity, upgrading infrastructure and modernising public administration require time, expertise and considerable investment.
Hoxha accepted that the list is long. “The negotiation is about the gap,” he said: where Albania is now, where it must reach and how the country intends to bridge the distance.
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