The EU door starts to open for Albania, a bit

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha stopped by New Europe’s NETV booth during the European People’s Party Congress in Warsaw, Poland on April 30, the same week he formally submitted an application to the European Union for membership, a process that takes some years, but which he said he was glad was finally underway. It’s been a good spring for the often-overlooked Albania already, as the country, together with Croatia, finally made it into NATO, a springboard toward greater integration into the wider EU community, and he was glad to talk about it, as well as other aspirations for his country, during an interview. With so much attention on the EU’s next round of expansion, ranging from Croatia to FYROM and, eventually the EU hopes, even to Turkey, Berisha was anxious that his country not be overlooked again, as it often is in the patchwork quilt that makes up the Balkans. Here’s what he had to say:

Just the other day, Albania formally submitted its EU application, how long you think that process might take?

April was really a very historic month for my nation, because of April 4, when Albanian Euro-Atlantic dream turned into the reality, we became a NATO member. Then April 28, Albanian request for candidate status in EU. All this become possible because of an extraordinary solidarity, which free European nations show to my nation, they become possible also because of the profound and multilateral reforms that changed tremendously my country. Albania is now a really safe country, its terrible organised crime is now resolved in a short time, which has meant more than 2,400 criminal groups and organizations and more than 1,000 of the members and their bosses (have been apprehended or broken down.) Last year, we got 2.7 million visitors with no any incidents. The numbers of the criminality are now lower than the average of the European Union.

In many ways, Albania has been more successful than even EU countries in that, hasn’t it?

What I was very concentrated on was proceeding with reforms and implementing of the reforms. Let’s take the fiscal discipline; four years ago, with the very high level of taxes, smuggling and abuses were billions of US dollars in my country. Now, the truth is a totally different reality. Albania is the lowest fiscal burden country in Europe, with 10 percent flat tax, 15 percent social security contribution, 1.5 percent small business tax. And the revenues increased every year to 22 percent, that is in three years we got 3.2 billion US dollars more than previous government with the double level of taxes. My country was suffering very much for the foreign investments, last December and January we signed more than 3.5 billion Euros, contracts on public private partnership and other investment.
 My country is modernising its infrastructure. In three or four years, Albania will have totally new roads and infrastructure. We are going towards new elections; my major goal is free and fair elections. And respecting any verdict of my nation I am very confident that they will vote for the future, they will vote for the project to be turned into the reality.

As you said, you are in NATO, which is an important step. When do you hope to be in the EU? Do you have any timetable for that?

My timetable is the following. Working hard to meet criteria, standards, norms. As for the date, I am deeply convinced that never is it going to happen such a fast that I would like, but it will happen faster than I foresee.

Then you will be sitting in the EU table as well…

Yes, my country will and definitely I will do every best to sit there.

Well then it will be another proud day for Albania…

Yes, it will be another project turned into the reality.