Rama has a 'plan B' for the EU. Does Europe have one for Albania?

Alfred Lela

Multiple reports point to a “nein” on Albania’s IBAR report from nine European Union member states, led by Germany. A good number of them tend to vote or act in line with Berlin for reasons tied to foreign policy; others are likely reacting with concern either to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s confrontational/transactional style, or to the noise created within the EU by the open theft of IPARD agricultural funds by the Albanian government. For such countries, neither geopolitics nor a positive recommendation from the European Commission is sufficient.

For Rama, nothing has changed—or this means nothing. In fact, the Albanian prime minister has been clearer and quicker than Europeans, both on himself and on his interlocutors. This is why he aligned with Aleksandar Vučić, the other Balkan autocrat, publicly signing that Op Ed piece for the German newspaper FAZ, a thesis that had long been circulating—and which, in all likelihood, originated with the Albanian prime minister.

In short, Rama is seeking—or prefers—a “conditional accession” to the EU: entry into the common market and free movement space, while postponing full membership in the “Europe of values.”

The question is: why would Rama and Vučić be interested in such a leper-tier accession?

First, because it lowers the threshold of EU demands on Tirana and Belgrade, transforming accession from a values-based process into a transactional, market-driven one. In a way, they are appealing to a distant echo of the EU’s origins, when it was an economic union of the Coal and Steel Community. It took decades for legislation, currencies, principles, and standards of universal rights to converge. Under this model, Albania would not enter Europe by fulfilling criteria on freedom of speech, assembly, elections, property rights, etc., but only through economic partnership—“give and take,” “you scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

This leads to the second rationale of the autocratic duo: using conditional accession as a platform for domestic political-electoral messaging. That means keeping supporters mobilized while suppressing critics and political opponents. It also means one or more electoral campaigns in the mold of those since 2013, where no European criteria—such as the Copenhagen standards—are respected, even as the rhetoric is filled with “integration” and promises of an “EU passport,” while actions resemble those of Alexander Lukashenko.

Of course, Rama and his counterpart in Belgrade are within their rights to pursue a “Plan B” for Europe—one that bypasses both the interests of their citizens and the fundamental values of the Union. The real question is: what is Europe’s “Plan B” for Albania?

The old “carrot and stick” approach has failed. Rama was made clearly aware that justice and parliament cannot be blocked and undermined to protect his deputy, suspected of corruption. Yet he persisted—unfazed and unapologetic. This refusal to bend, even after EU negotiations and accession were made conditional—indeed, his central and only campaign promise in the May 11, 2025, elections—says much about his priorities. The prime minister, it appears, is unconcerned both with EU integration and with the promises made to Albanian citizens less than a year ago.

So the question for European officials and policymakers is this: what would happen in your countries with such a prime minister?

A shallow, arrogant, and prejudiced answer has already been offered by Marta Kos, implying that corruption is not Rama’s problem, but the Albanians’.

Albanians, for their part, cannot ask the EU to appoint them a viceroy—nor would that be appropriate or effective. But what can be done is to withdraw support for a prime minister who has a “Plan B” both for the EU and for Albania, not as an alternative path for the country, but as an option that serves his power rather than the state.

The European Union cannot become the final crutch of an autocrat who, through Balkan cunning, seeks a European pass.

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