Edi Rama for prestige The Guardian: “Albania is cursed”

Albania's prime minister, Edi Rama, wants to be the man who will put his country on the road to membership in the European Union, but he is facing two major problems.

In Europe, major leaders are playing a strong, careful game in acknowledging other potential members at the time of increased populist and Euro-PAssimist sentiment, while in his country Rama is facing demonstrations against his rule, by a pro-European opposition but accusing him of corruption and links to organised crime, demanding early elections.

In an interview by his office in central Tirana last week, Rama said that for Albania, EU entry meant that “finally had the opportunity to put ourselves in a safe area by the curses of history”.

Protesters clashing with police in Tirana

Albania was the last country in Europe to get rid of communist rule in 1992, after decades in which this small country became subject to terror and isolation under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, paranoid Balkan Stalinist.

“We were North Korea of Europe,” said Rama. We were isolated from the west, isolated from the east. We had the most cruel Communist regime. Which is why we're now so pro-Nato, pro-European... We have the most pro-European Muslims in the world. ”

In a survey last year, 95 percent of Albania's population said it believed that EU membership would help the country, it translates Periscope from The Guardian.

After the fall of communism, vicious capitalism took over, and hundreds of thousands of Albanians left the country to head towards Italy and other European countries. Among them were the nucleus of the criminal brands, which were distributed across Europe and infiltrated local politics. Rama's task has been to convince the European Commission that reforms were progressing, even though slowly, even when critics in the country are accusing him of running a rotten system.

The European Commission's report, presented by Periscopi last month, said that Albania, but even Northern Macedonia, had made sufficient reforms to start the negotiation process, but the final decision remains to Europe's political leaders, and now seems impossible for the summit to be held at the end of this month to result in green light.

Rama still has hope to change his mind. Among European leaders, he has the reputation of an unusual attraction since he came to power in the faraway 2013. He was a professional artist and basketball player.

Eddy Rama's work in 2017 in Bienenalen, Venice

A basketball basket adorns his living room, while inside is his own office. The walls are illustrated by the sketches Rama does while working at the desk. One is the image of Alastair Campbell, who had tarnished the national hero of Albanians, Skenderbeun, riding a horse with one hand carrying a sword and the other carrying an iPhone. Rama calls Tony Blair his main political inspiration, and committed Campbell as political consultant. These two remained good “ ”, he says.

As European leaders worry about the internal political optical of opening new negotiations at the time when there is little aesthetic for enlargement, Rama's position has occasionally seemed implacable.

I can tell you that Angela Merkel is fully supportive. She was raised in a communist country,” said Rama. Other leaders are more difficult to obey. At a summit in Sofia last month, Rama and French President Emmanuel Macron exchanged words of great tension over how long negotiations for membership should be extended.

In the interview, Rama had warned that Russia, China and the radical Islamists would fill the gap if the EU did not engage in Albania.

Erion Veliaj, chairman of Tirana and close associate of Mr. Rama said he believes the latter, along with Zaev of Northern Macedonia, should be rewarded for the difficult reforms they have undertaken. I think both have been treated very badly. They've made bad decisions, they've risked mandates, sometimes life” he said.

But Rama is not going through a bad time in Brussels alone. Protests against his government have intensified in Albania as well.

“E have an authoritarian, arrogan and nontransparent prime minister,” said Albana Vokshi, MP from the Albanian opposition ranks, more precisely in the Democratic party leading the protests.

The country's president, Ilir Meta, called for local elections that were envisioned to be held on June 30th to be postponed, while Rama wants to go to last year without the opposition, saying he cannot reward street protests.

Not a month goes by without a strong scandal linking them to Albanian crime figures. The former interior minister will soon go to the dock to face charges of drug trafficking. Last week, the German picture BILD published some wiretapping where known criminal figures were heard until they discussed elections with two mayors from Rama's socialist party.

While international support for Rama has dropped greatly, many analysts do not believe the Democratic Party on the other side is better. We need a change beyond the government. We need a new system, a solution for the coming decades,” said Blendy Fevziu, a veteran journalist who holds a controversial political commission.

The “looks like we're cursed, because when the EU was good, we were bad; now that we're good, the EU has gotten in trouble,” he said. With particular interest, he is looking at Brexi's witch with distrust, and he expressed surprise that the Laborist party had expelled his old friend Campbell.

It's very Balkan what's happening in Britain. Deal, no deal, no soft limits, strong limits. Like the Balkans! It's like the Bosnian Parliament. While we're trying to Europeanize, it looks like they're confronting us.