Beyond the negotiations: Who explains the EU accession process to Albanians?

By Gledis Gjipali

“Citizens should feel that they have a direct interest in this project,” the Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, declared on 17 April 2025, at the “EU Meets the Balkans” forum. Speaking about the region’s European integration, she pointed to a shortcoming of the process: the benefits of membership have often seemed too distant to citizens. For Albania, this raises a question that goes beyond the progress of the negotiations: how well do citizens understand what integration changes in their lives? For a farmer, an entrepreneur or a student, the answer requires concrete explanations of the standards that must be met, the costs of adaptation and the opportunities that open up. Who gives these explanations to Albanians, and how accessible is the information for those who must prepare for the changes?

For many years now, citizens have been offered only information on the technical and political aspects of the process. The EU’s institutional architecture itself is complicated and difficult to explain, which leads to a fading of the wider public’s interest. This aspect has been seen as an advantage by politics, isolating the process into stages, dates or high-level meetings, while at the same time detaching itself from its responsibility to produce concrete results and benefits for society. Its use for the domestic politics of the day is also common, starting from the approval of laws “that Brussels demands” to the taking as examples of different models in European countries to justify a specific development. What is always ‘forgotten’ to be explained is how citizens are affected in their everyday lives by this process. This forgetfulness comes first of all from the very way public policies are drafted in Albania: with very little analysis, calculation or broad involvement of interest actors, and with many slogans, political rhetoric and care for the image conveyed. In a process as transformative as integration is, which touches almost every field of life and under the continuous pressure of time to meet the many deadlines set, this way of policymaking shows its problems most visibly. For better or worse, the consequences are felt the closer you get to membership, and mainly after it, as examples from the EU’s recent enlargements show us (Croatia, or Romania and Bulgaria), where citizens’ support for the EU fell noticeably in the years after accession.

This information deficit created by politics should have been softened by the institutions, which are responsible for undertaking and implementing the comprehensive reforms that come with EU membership. Influenced by politics, the institutions provide very little information. With a few positive exceptions, such as the Bank of Albania for entry into SEPA or the Ministry of Agriculture for European funds, the institutions settle for communicating the bureaucratic aspects of the process, such as the number of meetings held, conferences organised, laws and strategies approved, and so on. European models of institutional transparency require the process to have communication, where information and discussions are two-way, and not one-way informing, which is a process already superseded by developments in technology and artificial intelligence.

Communication is very important especially for some of the interest groups that are directly affected by the developments of the process and will have to bear its costs in the short term. Small and medium businesses, the self-employed, farmers and so on are those who feel the impact of the process first and will have to bear the costs of adapting to European legislation, standards and methods in their daily work. These groups must be at the centre of the process, starting from information, communication and participation in the important decisions throughout the reforms. Information enables interest groups to understand the changes; involvement gives them the opportunity to influence the way and the deadlines of their implementation. The ability with which these groups of society will adapt to the emerging needs and turn them into advantages is the key to measuring the success of the process, and not the date of membership. The institutions’ lack of understanding of the importance of their involvement will also have to be addressed through self-organisation and strengthening in professional and sectoral associations and groupings. The complicated structure of EU decision-making makes their role indispensable in order to better defend their interests and to develop in a vast European market. Their integration into pan-European bodies with influence on decision-making is by now not only added value, but a necessity in order to exploit in the future the full potential of the European market.

If politics directs information in the direction that suits it and the institutions do not communicate properly with interest groups, can the media overcome, or at least soften, this gap? In this panorama that leaves little room for optimism, the media too are not unaffected by these negative phenomena. The over-politicisation of information affects the media’s approach to the process, which is also accompanied by little knowledge about it. The lack of specialisation of journalists, an old unhealed wound of Albanian journalism, appears in the identical information in covering the process and in dry analyses dominated by geopolitical developments. A distinction is made by some media with an economic profile, such as the magazine Monitor or Scan TV, which, because they are closer to business, touch in an analytical way and address concrete concerns that come, or will come, from the process.

Beyond the day’s news reports and television debate studios, there is ample space to which the media can devote attention without losing the public’s interest. Investigative journalism can play an important role in verifying how the European standards already included in legislation are implemented in practice. The approval of a law is only the starting point of this verification. Do the institutions have the personnel, the equipment, the budget and, above all, the will to implement it? The answers require examination of documents, data and testimony from the field, which make the process current for citizens, but also help create a broader awareness when the institutions do not properly defend the public interest. One of the advantages of the process is that different interest groups can find allies in European institutions or bodies when the central or local government does not respond to their problems and sensitivities, and here the role of journalism is key in conveying information and analyses not influenced by the interests of the parties.

Some fields of the process are more important than others, both because of the difficulties in achieving European standards and because they touch citizens more directly and more quickly.

Food safety and the environment are two of these fields where reporting and coverage by journalists can make integration tangible for the public. A story that follows the path of a product from the farm to the consumer can show what is checked, where the shortcomings appear and what the producer needs to correct them. Likewise, following a business’s discharges into a river can link environmental obligations with the quality of the water and the life of the community. Of course, such articles are not lacking, but they are so rare that they seem like issues so distant for citizens and part of a future that is still far away. This is a perception that must change, because it will enable not only a good understanding of the process, but also an increase in pressure and accountability towards institutions and decision-makers.

The media’s attention must also follow the distribution of the costs and benefits of the process. An affordable investment for a large company can be a serious obstacle for a small producer. Public support, training and adaptation time thus become part of the story. The experiences of countries that have gone through the same process can help, if they are examined together with the conditions that made them work: who was financed, what help they received and what results were achieved. A foreign model has value when it helps to understand what can be applied in Albania and what must be adapted.

The media can also help citizens and interest groups take part in the decisions that affect them. For this, information must arrive before the decisions have been taken: when a consultation opens, what is proposed, who is affected and how opinions can be submitted. Journalists can give space to the concerns of farmers, professionals and local communities, as well as follow the institutions’ responses to them. The media’s role is to increase the opportunities for informed participation and to demand accountability if this participation has influenced decision-making.

Like any intensive process, Albania’s EU membership will also leave some categories of society outside the main flow of information and involvement. Similarly to other countries in the region, residents of rural areas or urban peripheries, the elderly, administration employees in small and distant towns will have less information and attention. This brings an obligation, first of all, for the institutions, but also for all of us, to reduce as much as possible the risk of these groups being excluded. It is also inevitable that the benefit from EU membership will not be the same for everyone, and there will be losers too, at least in the short term. False expectations must not be created that everything will be fixed and solved with the country’s membership. The various problems our society has will continue inside the European Union as well. Albanian citizens must be realistic about what the process brings, and this is achieved by having information and an honest discussion about our capacities, strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities offered. Albania must have several priority sectors that it will support in order to benefit maximally from the process, and on that basis build success for the whole of society. A “wait and see what good membership will bring” approach does not work for the EU, which is built on the basis of competition and the assessment of abilities. Such an approach risks bringing us inside the European Union as a second-hand country and citizens.

In the old EU member countries there is ever more internal debate about the achievements of European integration and how not every country that joins should automatically benefit from the achievements and common goods this process has brought over decades. In an ever more sovereignist and transactional world climate, these discussions are expected to receive ever more attention and, consequently, will influence the shape of tomorrow’s European Union, of which we too will be part. Albania needs to have one or several answers to the difficult question: what does Albania bring to the European Union by becoming a member? Clear argumentation beyond slogans requires first of all that we ourselves be clear about the benefits we expect and how we will maximise them, and then foresee the contribution we will offer our future common family. This whole process needs a broad national discussion, which can be built only on strong pillars of transparency, communication and the inclusion of all layers of society. The more understandable and open the process, the more opportunities citizens will have to influence it and to prepare for a successful membership.

This article is published within a series of articles on the theme “Media and European Integration” of the Albanian Media Institute.