These are momentous days for Albania. Two separate events – Kosovo’s declaration of independence and the likelihood of receiving an invitation to join the Nato alliance – offer one of Europe’s poorest countries an unprecedented chance of improving its long-term prospects.
For ethnic Albanians, who live in five countries in the western Balkans as a result of arbitrary drawing of national boundaries before and after the first world war, Kosovo’s re-birth on February 17 as a European state was cause for jubilation.
“There’s a sense that a historical injustice has been put right,” says Remzi Lani, director of the Soros Institute in Tirana.
Yet the celebrations in Tirana included scarcely a mention of Greater Albania, the idea that all 6m Albanians in the region should live in one nation state, indicating how much politics in the western Balkans has changed in the past 10 years.
“The independence of Kosovo has put an end to this project. We have already separated myths from politics and we are certain that Kosovo and Albania are going to have very good neighbourly relations,” says Sali Berisha, the prime minister.
A €600m ($932m) project to upgrade the road from the port of Durres on the Adriatic to the border with Kosovo underscores the new relationship. Bechtel of the US and Turkey’s Enka group are building a 70km section of highway including a series of tunnels through the mountains, as well as widening the existing road.
When the upgrade is completed next year, it will take less than three hours to drive between Durres and Pristina, the Kosovar capital, compared with about 10 hours at present.
The new road is expected to transform the economy of northern Albania, the country’s most impoverished region, which has seen massive emigration, both to Tirana and abroad, since the end of communism. It will open up a pristine mountain region to tourism. And it could give businesses in Kovoso, and eventually Serbia, access to a much faster export route than is presently available through commercial ports in Croatia or Greece.
Mr Berisha stresses that Albania is seeking closer economic integration with all its neighbours, not just Kosovo. “We are opening an integrated customs post with Montenegro shortly, organised with EU assistance, and we’ve proposed the same to Macedonia,” he said.
Road links with both countries are being improved in a broader drive to modernise infrastructure. This year’s budget allocates €300m, equivalent to just under 3 per cent of gross domestic product, for road upgrades.
Two Greek banks are arranging a €230m syndicated loan for the Kosovo highway, while international institutions and the Italian and Greek governments are financing smaller sections of highway around the country.
All the new roads will lead to the ports of Durres and Vlora, which are seen as potential transit hubs for the central Mediterranean. While Durres is the main gateway for trade, Vlora is poised for development. An Italian company is building a small private oil terminal at Vlora, while a Swiss group is promoting a €500m project to build and operate a container terminal on a concession basis.
An invitation to join Nato would give a boost to Albania’s business climate, encourage more foreign companies to invest and accelerate the pace of modernisation, according to European observers in Tirana. Popular support for membership is high, with more than 90 per cent of Albanians in favour, according to opinion polls.
Acceptance would speed the ratification of the stabilisation and association agreement with the European Union, and open the way for Albania to become a formal candidate for membership – although a starting date for accession talks may be a long way off, according to EU officials.
Albania has fulfilled both the political and military criteria for Nato membership, Mr Berisha says.
The political criteria have focused on judicial and electoral reforms, areas where Albania had been seen as lagging behind Croatia and Macedonia, its fellow candidates for membership.
President Bamir Topi said a new law to strengthen the judiciary, which, among other things, provides for improved training and better salaries for prosecutors and judges, would raise standards in the legal profession.
A second law under preparation would consolidate the independence of the high judicial council, the country’s highest legal authority, which is chaired by the president. “Judicial offices have been politicised in the past, so the system has got to change,” Mr Topi says. “These reforms are complex but they must be implemented.”
Meanwhile tenders are being evaluated for a new high-tech system of issuing identity cards which, along with a new electronic voters’ registry, would eliminate long-standing obstacles to holding elections that match European standards. Next year’s parliamentary elections would be the first test of the new system.
An estimated 1m Albanians of voting age are believed to live outside the country, while another 500,000 have moved from rural areas to Tirana and other cities. Political parties have traded accusations of electoral fraud after every recent election.
Mr Berisha’s right-of-centre government has declared a zero-tolerance policy on corruption. Several high-profile sackings have taken place, including a deputy transport minister and senior officials at the highways directorate. It is too early to say whether personnel changes will make a permanent difference. But widespread corruption remains a problem.
Albania’s score was lower than other countries in the western Balkans, in the latest corruption perception index published by Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, though it moved up six places from 105th out of 180 countries.
In some areas, however, progress is being made. For example, Krenar Ahmeti, the Tirana traffic police chief, has instituted a system of paying police officers 10 per cent of the fines they impose for traffic offences. “This means they have an incentive to do the job properly and are less willing to take bribes,” he says.
Ordinary Albanians as well as politicians are hopeful that membership of a western club might help the country to shake off its unflattering image as a backward place plagued by corruption, danger and organised crime.
One reason for the image problem, according to western observers, is that Albania has succeeded in exporting its mafia groups to cities in western Europe and
