Greece remains one of the most consistent supporters of Albania’s accession prospects. During his tenure as MFA, Venizelos stated that Greece stood “firmly in favour of Albania’s European integration”.394
Indeed, in recent years, Athens was one of the main sponsors of Tirana’s final ‘push’ to receive candidate status. Venizelos also reassured Prime Minister Rama that the Albanian candidate status would be a ‘key priority’ of the Greek 2014 Presidency395, and stressed that “Greece and Albania are determined to work
together to achieve this goal”.396 Sure enough, towards the end of the Hellenic Presidency on 24 June
2014, Albania was given the green light, in a move that Venizelos described as “a message of friendship and cooperation to Albania, to the Albanian government and to the Albanian political system”.397 A
number of issues bind the two countries together: Albania and Greece are interdependent, although arguably in an unbalanced way, since Tirana seems to be more dependent on Athens than vice versa. The latest chapter in the building of close relations between the two countries is the Trans Adriatic Pipeline project, which will transfer Azeri gas to Italy via Greece and Albania.
However, there are several aspects that complicate relations between the two countries and may potentially create future obstacles in Albania’s accession process. Greece and Albania have had at times clashes due to a series of bilateral disputes. The Greek side focuses especially on the question of the rights of the Greek minority in Albania, and on the regulation of the Exclusive Economic Zones of the two countries. Greece is also dissatisfied with what it sees as a growing anti-Greek sentiment in Albanian society and public discourse, expressed by the rising influence of nationalist and anti-Greek parties. For its part, Albania complains about the bureaucratic hurdles that Albanian immigrants often face in Greece, the failure of the Greek parliament to formally annul the ‘law of war’ with Albania, Greece’s non-recognition of Kosovo, and the issue of the properties of Albanian Chams who fled Greece in the 1940s.
The two governments have opposing views on all these topics and ongoing negotiations aimed at resolving some of these problems are slow and with yet uncertain outcomes. It is also characteristic that the two societies have completely different, and often sharply opposing, attitudes about these
391 ANEL, Foreign Policy and National Defense, 2nd Party Conference, 8 December 2014, available at
http://anexartitoiellines.gr/files/ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟ/ΕΞΩΤΕΡΙΚΗ%20ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗ_ΕΘΝΙΚΗ%20ΑΜΥΝΑ.pdf (last accessed on: 31 January 2015).
392 ANEL, Press Briefing 14/12/2014, available at: http://anexartitoiellines.gr/post.php?post_id=5389 (last accessed on: 31
January 2015).
393 Ibid.
394 Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Venizelos’ statements to Greek journalists
in Tirana, 21 February 2014, text in Greek, op. cit.
395 See more in Koktsidis, Pavlos et. al. (2014), op.cit., p. 48.
396 “Deputy Prime Minister and FM Venizelos wraps up visit to Western Balkans Friday”,Greek EU Presidency, available at:
http://gr2014.eu/news/press-releases/deputy-prime-minister-and-fm-venizelos-wraps-visit-western-balkans (last accessed on: 20 October 2014).
397 “EU ministers back candidacy status for Albania”, BBC Democracy Live, 24 June 2014, available at:
issues, as well as about the perceptions of security threats emanating from each other. This was demonstrated in the findings of parallel opinion polls that were conducted in the two countries by ELIAMEP and the Albanian Institute for International Studies in 2013. The surveys showed that the two countries are inextricably linked and interdependent in a number of ways, but also that the two societies hold fundamentally different views on most issues, and frequently hostile attitudes towards each other.398 Finally, as Albania’s accession process advances, a number of other disagreements are
likely to emerge, from environmental protection to free movement of persons and goods, to energy and transport.
Could these problems threaten Albania’s accession process? MFA officials stress that Greece considers the disputes with Albania as part of the wider agenda of Tirana’s relations with the EU. They argue that several problems in relations between Greece and Albania, including the protection of the rights of the Greek minority in Albania, should not be seen as bilateral, but rather as falling within the scope of the European acquis and Copenhagen conditions.399 The Greek MFA is confident that many outstanding
issues will be adequately addressed and resolved before Albania joins the EU, during the accession negotiations. At the same time, however, none of the interviewees thought that Greece could afford to threaten Albania with a veto in the accession talks if it wanted to ensure the resolution of pending difficulties. Essentially, the diplomatic capital spent by Athens on fYROM’s accession process means that its capacity to negotiate other important issues is reduced.
The fact that Albania may not be a very popular candidate for accession further complicates Greek policy. It is no secret that several Western European countries remain highly sceptical about Albania’s European perspective. In that context, if Greece overly stresses its own problems with Albania it may offer a perfect cover to these countries for delaying Tirana’s accession process. In such a situation, Greece could potentially take the blame for any deferrals, which might heighten anti-Greek sentiment in Albania. This would be a negative scenario for Greece, and Greek officials are conscious of the risk of Athens being seen as the gatekeeper in the Albanian accession process. Therefore, the MFA is likely to continue to emphasise that issues between the two countries are not bilateral, but of concern to the EU as a whole. At the same time, Greece is expected to continue to fully support Albania’s accession process in order to counter-balance reluctance from other EU capitals. Thus, another delicate balance that the Greek diplomacy has to maintain: keeping Albania’s European perspective opened, while trying to resolve bilateral issues through the accession process, without being perceived as standing in Tirana’s way towards the EU.
Most Greek political parties back the official position regarding Albania’s EU membership bid and agree that Albania’s accession will be beneficial for both countries. Most parties also understand that Albania’s accession process is a unique opportunity for Greece to resolve its problems with Tirana within the framework of the accession negotiations. The exceptions include junior governmental coalition partner ANEL, which holds very negative views of Albania. The party believes that Albania ‘usurps’ Greek history, while Albanians actively pursue a revisionist policy towards Greece and other neighbouring countries, seeking to realise a Greater Albania. The party suggests that Albania is promoting this vision through the education of its youth, and the creation of false and inaccurate maps of the Balkans, which are circulated in international fora.400 But the most extreme position on Albania
398 See details in Armakolas, Ioannis (2013), The Greek public opinion towards Albania and the Albanians – Social attitudes and perceptions, Athens: Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy; Cela, Alba and Sashenka, Ljeshaj (2014),
Albanian Greek relations from the eyes of the Albanian public - Perceptions 2013, Tirana: Albanian Institute of International Studies & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
399 Interviews with officials in the Secretariat of European Affairs, Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 2014.
400 ANEL, Foreign Policy and National Defense, 2nd Party Conference, 8 December 2014, available at:
http://anexartitoiellines.gr/files/ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟ/ΕΞΩΤΕΡΙΚΗ%20ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗ_ΕΘΝΙΚΗ%20ΑΜΥΝΑ.pdf (last accessed on: 31 January 2015).
is expressed by the Golden Dawn, a fiercely anti-Albanian party, which fully opposes the idea of Albania’s EU membership on grounds that the country is alien to Europe and potentially a source of great dangers due to corruption and ‘Islamic terrorism’.401