Albania unable to hold elections, EU admits
In an unprecedented statement, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle lamented yesterday (19 July) the failures of the Albanian electoral system, urging the EU hopeful to undertake deep parliamentary reform.
Ashton and Füle lamented the fallout from the recent mayoral vote in Tirana (see 'Background') and used simple and unusual wording to convey the message that the electoral system in Albania needs "urgent" and "thorough" reform.
"The elections in Tirana were not good as they demonstrated beyond doubt that the electoral framework needs to be reformed," the top EU officials stated.
In their written message, Ashton and Füle call on the Albanian authorities to follow the recommendations of the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's specialised body set up to provide urgent constitutional assistance to Central and Eastern Europe.
"It is time for political forces in Albania to overcome the political stalemate and return to a level of political dialogue that would allow the proper functioning of key democratic institutions, notably the parliament," the two representatives state.
EU officials recently denounced the "lack of political maturity" in Albania, who officially says it would like to achieve EU candidate status by the end of this year.
In an unprecedented gesture, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso cancelled a trip to Albania last May, signalling that patience with the EU hopeful was wearing thin in Brussels circles.
EU insiders had hoped that Croatia's recent successful closure of the accession negotiations would give new momentum to the remaining membership hopefuls in the Western Balkans: Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo. However, with the exception of Serbia, the region's EU hopefuls appear to have provided more disappointment than success recently.
Albania has experienced a difficult transition to democracy partly due to the fact that under communism, the country was a de facto autarchy which had almost no contact with the outside world.
Every Albanian election since the fall of communism in the early 1990s has been marred by accusations of fraud, but the last parliamentary and mayoral elections left the country in political paralysis.
National elections, held on 28 June 2009, saw Albania's dominant post-communist politician Sali Berisha clinch a second four-year term as prime minister. The opposition Socialists refused to accept the results and accused his government of corruption and vote fraud.
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