Attitudes to further expansion are lukewarm

Albania

Sali Berisha, Albania's prime minister, submitted his country's application for EU membership to the Czech EU presidency on Tuesday (28 April). Officials are not convinced that the country – generally viewed as a Balkan laggard, together with Bosnia and Herzegovina – meets the conditions for membership talks to open. But Albania is ahead of its peers in one respect: on 1 April, its Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU entered into force, putting it, in that respect at least, in the company of Croatia and Macedonia.
The next step will be for EU member states to refer Albania's application to the European Commission for an in-depth assessment. In Montenegro's case, that referral was made last Thursday (23 April). The process generally takes around a year to complete, but only then do member states start discussing when it might be possible to open talks.
Albania is to hold a parliamentary election on 28 June. Local media had speculated that the poll might have to be postponed because of delays in issuing new identification cards and passports. According to government figures, 729,000 of Albania's 3.6 million inhabitants have not yet received the new documents, which are needed in order to vote,. The opposition claims that the number is closer to a million and that hundreds of thousands of voters could be denied their democratic rights.