Albania: Edi Rama’s Socialism Without the Left

By Eriseld Zeneli

There is a political paradox that Europe keeps watching with a certain tolerance. Albania has been governed for over a decade by a party that calls itself socialist, belongs to the European socialist family and boasts of Edi Rama as one of its best-known leaders in the Balkans.

Yet looking at the policies adopted in Tirana, the gap between the label and the governing model is becoming harder and harder to ignore. For over a hundred days, every evening, Albanian citizens have returned to the streets.

On September 12, the protests reached their 105th consecutive day, including parts of the diaspora. It all began with protests against a large tourism project in the Zvërnec and Narta lagoon areas, then expanded to encompass the relationship between politics and large economic interests, land management and, more broadly, a power system perceived as increasingly impervious to dissent.

Yet it would be simplistic to interpret those squares through the usual clash between Edi Rama and Sali Berisha. Among the slogans, one was particularly resonant: “Rama to prison, Berisha to prison.” Some of the protests seemed to challenge not only those in government, but a political system that has struggled for years to produce a credible alternative.

And here emerges the contradiction of Rama’s socialism. European social democracy built its identity on the strength of public services, redistribution, labor protection and the state’s ability to correct market imbalances. Rama’s Albania, on the other hand, has made public-private partnerships, concessions and large-scale real estate investments one of the driving forces of its modernization.

The country has changed. Tirana is unrecognizable from fifteen years ago, tourism is growing, capital and new investments are pouring in. Denying this would be intellectually dishonest. But the very success of this transformation raises the inevitable question: who benefits from growth, and what counterweights accompany the growing intertwining of public decision-making and large-scale private interests?

It is not a question of being pro or against the market. It is, if anything, a liberal and protective question: how transparent is public decision-making? How strong is competition? What tools do citizens have when a large investment clashes with the environment, the local area or a community’s interests? And how strong are the institutions needed to limit political power?

Then there is the Italian paradox. While a considerable segment of the European left challenges Giorgia Meloni on immigration and the externalization of asylum procedures, a leader of the European socialist family has become the Italian prime minister’s indispensable partner in the so-called “Albanian model”. The Shëngjin and Gjadër centers were born from the agreement between Rome and Tirana.

The legitimacy and effectiveness of this model can be debated without turning the immigration debate into an ideological battle. But the political contradiction remains: Rama asserts his socialist belonging in Europe and, at the same time, offers the Italian right the platform on which to test one of its most controversial immigration policies.

Yet Rama continues to enjoy considerable political capital in European governments. Not without reason. Albania is strongly pro-Western, a NATO member, aligned with European foreign policy and determined to continue its path toward EU admission. In a complex region, Rama guarantees stability and predictability.

But this is precisely where Europe must avoid a mistake already seen in the Balkans: confusing stability with the quality of democracy. Perhaps, then, the real question is not even whether Rama is truly socialist.

It is about whether a government can call itself progressive when economic modernization advances faster than the democratic counterweights called to govern it. Because being European does not mean only being on the right side of geopolitics. It means accepting that even power that wins elections has its limits.

Il Riformista