ALBANIA: Short on Homework for Joining EU

• by Claudia Ciobanu (bucharest)
• Wednesday, July 15, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Incumbent Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party (DP) led his party to a narrow victory in the Jun. 28 elections. The party won 47 percent of the vote, corresponding to 71 seats in the 140-member parliament.

Berisha declared immediately that Albanians had given his party 'a vote of confidence' and that 'integration (into the European Union) is the main issue in the four years to come.'

DP has governed Albania single-handedly between 2005 and 2009. This time around, it will need the support of a smaller party, the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI), in order to form the government. SMI leader Ilir Meta has declared that a DP-SMI alliance is 'the only one in Albania's interests' at the moment, even though SMI is a splinter of the Socialist Party, which was the main challenger to DP in these elections.

Berisha's government submitted a formal application for joining the EU in April this year. Even though European Commission (EC) officials considered the application premature, the initiation of the EU integration process did win Berisha sympathy among Albanian voters.

But the road to the EU does not seem easy for Albania. One of the main requests placed by the EC on candidate states is to tackle high-level corruption which might affect the distribution of EU funds.

EU officials are likely to be tough on Albania, after being forced last year to withdraw hundreds of millions of euros in aid from Bulgaria because of mismanagement of such moneys. The EU has never confronted such large- scale fraud of its own money until Bulgaria and Romania became members in 2007.

Some commentators argue that Berisha's government has not shown much willingness to fight corruption in its previous term.

'With DP in government, corruption has not been reduced, it has merely mutated in shape and form,' says Jeton Saliu, lecturer in law at the University of Tirana and member of the small opposition party G99. 'After four years with Berisha in power, corruption is now more centralised, situated at higher levels, but nonetheless pervasive and palpable in the echelons of all state institutions.

'The new governing coalition formed by DP and SMI (Socialist Movement for Integration) will be fragile and subject to the needs, greed, and desires of everyone in the majority,' Saliu told IPS. 'Hence, I expect this government to be even more marred by corruption scandals than the previous one.'

Corruption is not the only problem the new Albanian government has to face. The world financial crisis has already started taking its toll on the poor country, with Tirana dailies reporting last week that migrant remittances, an important source of income for Albania, have practically dried up in the first half of 2009. A third of Albanians are estimated to be living abroad.

During the election campaign, Berisha announced that he would not take a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as other Eastern European countries affected by the crisis have. But it is hard to see what other financial resources the new government might find.

Since late 2008, the Berisha government has contracted huge loans on the international financial markets, much of these for construction of a highway linking capital Tirana to Pristina (capital of Kosovo, where 90 percent of the population is ethnically Albanian). International rating agencies and the IMF had warned against 'unwise pre-electoral spending' of this kind.

The general prosecutor's office in Tirana has been investigating accusations of high-level corruption leading to the Albanian government accepting an above-market price for the highway.

But many Albanians expect that the benefits from the highway will exceed the exorbitant costs. 'The highway to Kosovo will help Albania's economy,' Jeton Saliu told IPS. 'It will make areas rich in minerals in the north of the country more accessible for exploitation, and help take communities from the north out of isolation.' The north of Albania is the poorest region in the country.

The highway fits well into a development agenda pursued by the DP government in its last term that was focused on stimulating the private sector and foreign investment. DP has eased conditions for business activities by simplifying the registration and tax payment procedures for companies.

Now accession negotiations with the EU, when begun, are expected to build investor confidence.

'DP has traditionally steered away from protectionist measures,' says Saliu, 'and it will probably do so in the upcoming mandate.' The new government is likely to continue the line of promoting the business sector and investing in energy projects, pursued by the previous Berisha executive in the previous mandate.

The presence in government of the SMI will not change the line of the policies pursued. '(SMI leader) Ilir Meta cannot, most definitely, be considered a socialist any more,' says Saliu. 'He is a pragmatic politician, who is simply taking care of his immediate interests.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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