Perspectives and challenges of Albania’s integration in the EU - From the fall of communism to the Thessaloniki Summit 1991-2006

• Pages: 82-92

Vol. 10 No. 3

November, 2024

Academic Journal of Business, Administration

Law and Social Sciences

82

E-ISSN 2410-8693

ISSN 2410-3918

Perspectives and challenges of Albania’s integration in the EU - From the fall

of communism to the Thessaloniki Summit 1991-2006

PhD Metin Venxha

University “Fan S. Noli” Korçë, Albania

DOI: hps://doi.org/10.2478/ajbals-2024-0023

Abstract

In 1991 students lled the squares of Tirana under the slogans “We want Albania like

Europe”, only few of them would have imagined that after 32 years from the fall of the

communist regime, Albania would still be waiting to be part of the European family.

The most optimistic thought that, once the regime fell, freedom and democracy would

triumph and the integration process would take only a few years. As for the rest, this

process would take time, but even for the pessimists it would never pass 2020.

The challenges of Albanian integration in EU, from 1991 to 2006, have been dierent

and often the progress of undertaken reforms within the framework of the European

integration has been slow and not at the required level. This slowness is often reected

in the European Commission reports or in declarations of dierent summits. This

phenomenon reects the limited culture in the state-building and that of political

dialogue, which comes as a result of a strong isolation period, almost half a century

under the communist dictatorship.

Between 1991 and 2006, the Albanian governments received nancial and human

resources from European organizations to help them abandon this self-centered

strategy. This paper is wrien within the framework of International Visegrad Fund

(IVF) Research Grand Programme of 2022, which involved consulting a signicant

number of archival papers in the European Union’s Historical Archive in Florence,

Italy.

Keywords: European integration, reform, democracy, nancial aid.

1. Introduction

The death of the communist leader Enver Hoxha in Albania, on April 11, 1985, for

many people brought a ray of hope for the end of the dictatorship and the beginning

Research Article

© 2024 Metin Venxha

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