Nieliberalizm Ediego Ramy pozostaje niezauważony przez UE

In power uninterrupted since 2013, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has overseen the shrinking and deterioration of Albania’s civic space and its slow transition into an electoral autocracy. Unlike another leaders in the Western Balkans, specified as Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić and Republika Srpska’s Milorad Dodik, who are usually treated as the region’s textbook autocrats, Rama’s openly unambiguous pro-European attitude and eccentric charisma have diverted attention at the global level distant from his illiberal wrongdoings at home.

While Albania officially launched EU accession negotiations a fewer weeks ago, cosmetically reaffirming the country’s unconditional European path, its leader engages in akin patterns of democratic coercion and organization capture to Vučić and Dodik. However, the EU’s vested interests in preserving this alliance with Tirana allows these actions to go unnoticed at best, and downplayed whenever possible. This is not only a trend that is clear among the EU’s institutions and the associate states but besides among many observers, analysts and experts.

The autocrat’s apprentice

Albania is gradually falling down the authoritarian spiral as key democratic indicators proceed to describe it as a “partly free” country. Courts are subject to political force and influence; media independency is limited; corruption is pervasive; citizen distrust in democratic institutions is high; and the opposition – both at the state and local levels – is weak and disorganized. This is actual to the degree that any consider Albania a de facto one-party state.

Key to this decline is the function of Edi Rama, who lacks serious challengers and has been able to marginalize the democratization and regulation of law agendas to a worrying degree. Within an organization and political framework that curbs any effort for accountability, Rama has crushed public dissent and even accepted the presence of organized crime – with whom he has been accused of sharing lucrative goals.

In the realm of EU accession, Rama has been artful and outspoken. The perception for years was that Albania was bearing the brunt of Bulgaria’s veto over North Macedonia, with whom the European Commission (EC) had coupled Tirana. In principle, Albania and North Macedonia would walk the EU road together regardless of Sofia’s whims – a decision that could make sense narratively. However, this outlook was reversed yet considering the stubbornness of the Bulgarian impasse.

Albania was released from this burden in September 2024 as its bid was decoupled from that of Skopje. In October it was even able to launch authoritative accession negotiations with the opening of the chapter cluster on fundamentals. Everything seemed to convey that Tirana was delivering its pledges and that, in the EU’s view, the Macedonian ball was an affordable 1 to drop for Albania’s sake. Tirana’s perceived advancement could be utilized to make the illusion that EU enlargement was back on track, never head the actual shortcomings.

Be a tyrant, but love the EU

EU institutions and associate states alike share a past of pragmatism over values erstwhile it comes to prioritizing bilateral or multilateral relations with non-EU states. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Tunisia are examples of governments with which the EU has entered into diverse agreements involving energy or migration – never head the countries’ track records on human rights and democratic standards.

Internally, however, Brussels struggles to come to terms with a likewise autocratic leadership like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who is failing to abide by EU values and can thus be politically ostracized erstwhile not punished. No oil supplies or anti-refugee mechanics can buy the EC and associate states’ acceptance of an illiberal EU government. Well, unless this government openly supports the sovereignty and legitimacy of the EU.

The figure of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is simply a prime example of this. While she does belong to the extremist right and is presently unfurling the most right-wing political agenda in decades, dismantling the rights of LGBTIQ+ parents and cracking down on peaceful protesting, she defends the EU. This redeeming origin allows her not to be treated as a pariah. EC president Ursula von der Leyen herself has made this crystal clear.

Edi Rama has for a long time followed Meloni’s model. Of course, this has been actual even before Meloni herself reached power. For the EU, and peculiarly for associate states, the Albanian prime minister offers a double advantage. He offers the simplicity of a Western Balkan “stabilocrat”, as he governs a country that fundamentally lacks an opposition, while he is besides a fervent supporter of the EU as a political task and of Albania’s unconditional future therein. This is in stark contrast to Aleksandar Vučić, who does deliver on stableness matters but is ambiguous at best about Serbia’s EU intentions and does not align with EU abroad policy. Rama appears, therefore, to be the best Western Balkan student in the EU’s enlargement classroom.

Rama has successfully captured the EU’s imagination as a charismatic and able leader. This was besides erstwhile actual of Vučić himself, Republika Srpska’s Milorad Dodik and the erstwhile Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Through his pro-western attitudes; unwavering support for Albania’s NATO and EU integration processes; ability to fend off regional bilateral disputes; and his “stabilitocratic” security, the EU feels comfortable about relying on him as a close ally whose democratic deficits it can afford to ignore. The chance of a political alternate emerging in Albania as of now is alternatively poor. This could see things turn out worse for the EU’s desperate quest for regional stability.

A message from the future

In the EU’s eyes, Rama mostly does not pose a threat. He is charismatic and reliable and, unlike Vučić and Dodik, he does not draw from Hungary’s dangerous illiberal influence. Instead, he pragmatically serves the interests of another little worrisome and more acceptable illiberal leaders, like Italy.

Deeper down, however, the EU’s determination for nurturing Albania’s stabilitocratic and semi-authoritarian strategy could have severe consequences. Allowing Rama and his clique to go about their business uncontrolled; setting no clear boundaries to democratic backsliding and to the erosion of the regulation of law; and turning a blind eye to clear human rights violations at home – all for the sake of geopolitics – could see his leadership evolve into a dangerous problem for the Union under the right conditions. Rama is, above all, a political chameleon.

The Albanian premier is surely not the kind of avid nationalist that overly plays with fearmongering among the population, unlike the communicative practices that are definitely more frequent in Vučić. But his good relation with the Serbian president reveals that their common denominator is not their ideology – if they have any at all – but their underlying desire to preserve power at all costs.

This is not only a informing to the EC or the associate states but also, and most especially, to journalists, academics, analysts and observers who, more frequently than not, neglect to include Rama on the list of regional autocrats. Overall, they seem to whitewash the policies of a showman that is undermining regular the core values of the EU.

Alejandro Esteso Pérez is simply a political scientist and investigator specializing in EU enlargement and Western Balkan politics. He is simply a 2023 Fellow at the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) and an external lecturer on contemporary Western Balkan politics at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He is presently pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Graz in Austria and is simply a Visiting Fellow at the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague.

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