EU Opens New Membership Negotiation Chapters With Albania

Albania held the third meeting of the Accession Conference with the European Union at the ministerial level on December 17 in Brussels, discussing the progress of Tirana in the EU accession process.

In the meeting, the EU opened negotiations with Albania on further clusters, for the second time in two months, Schengen.News reports.

The meeting served to open negotiations on Cluster Six related to external relations, including chapters 30 (external relations) and chapter 31 (foreign, security and defence policy).

In addition, the EU also established benchmarks for the provisional closure of these chapters following the opening of the first cluster on “Fundamentals” on October 15, 2024.

Albania Aims to Open More Chapters by Spring 2025 
In yesterday’s meeting held in Brussels, the EU delegation was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, on behalf of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Péter Szijjártó, with the participation of Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos. At the same time, the Albanian delegation was led by the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama. 

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Albania, in a press conference, said that the ambition of the Albanian government is to open more chapters in the spring and to close those opened this year by 2025.

Rama considered the opening of the new cluster a very important step made according to plan.

Separated Path From North Macedonia 
In September this year, the Bulgarian permanent representative spokesperson said that the EU accession path of Albania would be separated from that of North Macedonia, with the first negotiations expected to open in mid-October formally. 

The spokesperson said that the decision was taken unanimously by the Ambassadors of the EU countries on September 25, 2024. 

Albania applied for EU membership in 2009. The Balkan country is not a member of the EU nor part of the EU’s borderless area of Schengen. 

Albania, together with North Macedonia, began accession talks with the EU in 2022, with the first Intergovernmental Conference being held in July 2022. 

Previously, the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, said that Albania should join the EU by 2030.

Source: https://schengen.news/eu-opens-new-membership-negotiation-chapters-with-albania/