• SHQIPËRI
  • KOSOVË
  • MAQEDONIA E VERIUT
  • MALI I ZI
  • Revista në PDF
6 July, 2025
Edicion Special
  • Home
  • OP/ED

    Azerbaijan dismisses claims of involvement in Israel-Iran conflict

    Elite Purges: Internal Conflict or External Design?

    Trump’s Threat of U.S. Intervention in Iran Exposes Roots of Critics’ Fears

    Crisis-Born, Purpose-Seeking: Can the EPC Define Europe’s Strategic Future?

    Serbia’s Request to the ICJ Turned Resolution 1244 into a Closed Chapter and Kosovo’s Independence into an Internationally Recognized Reality

    Unpredictable world

    Promoting Arab Culture and Language in the Framework of Cultural Diversity and Dialogue.

    ‘A Tragic Circus’: Albanian PD Figures Lash Out After LaCivita-Backed Campaign Collapses

    Erosion of Liberal Democracy in Europe Complicates Canada’s Search for Like-Minded Allies

  • Interview

    Exclusive: “Even After Tito – Tito”/ Ambassador Zlatko Kramarić on Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy’s Future in the Balkans

    The Conclusion of the Diplomatic Mission / Ambassador Dancho Markovski: Strengthening Albania-North Macedonia Relations for a Shared European Future

    A Century of Diplomatic Relations Between Albania and Russia: Exclusive Interview with the Russian Ambassador to Albania, H.E. Alexey Zaytsev

    Exclusive/ The chairman of the Freedom Party, Ilir Meta: “The will of the citizens will triumph in Albania, as it did in North Macedonia”

    Exclusive/ The Russian Ambassador to Albania Mr. Mikhail Afanasiev: Russia only aims to end that war started by the West in Ukraine

    Exclusive/ Skopje’s top diplomat to Tirana, Dancho Markovski: OSCE Chairmanship a Project of National Importance for North Macedonia

    Exclusive interview of Croatian Ambassador Zlatko Kramaric: ‘There is progress in Croatian-Albanian relations, but it is still not enough’  

    The first anniversary of the appointment as Archbishop at the head of the Catholic Church/ Mons. Arjan Dodaj: Only God can be the author of our walk!

    Azerbaijan’s Ambassador Anar Huseynov: President Aliyev’s visit to Albania opened a new page in our relations through the specific accords reached

  • Realpolitik

    Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

    Chancellor Merz passed “the exam”! Political stupidity! 5 per cent or study Russian! The Firing East!      

    A top phone call as disappointment! Exit from Brexit! Germany at the helm! End this political shame up!

    That’s it! The quartet of hope! Shame on Kosovo! The Summit of a Community without Identity!

    Only praises and prolises for Meloni! Facts versus untruths! Immediate ceasefire and genuine peace, no deal for new occupation! Back after 60 years !

    US nuclear tariff bomb!! Europa fires back! NATO ok, but with or without Article 5? Kallas urges reforms!

    Europe riarmed! Germany’s epochal shift! Spoiled soup! EU Commissioner Kos demands reforms!

    Europe tightens the ranks! The Euro-Atlantic Alliance in danger! USA-1945!! A true Peace, not new occupation!

    WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.  Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    The law of force over the force of law! Multilateral diplomacy is the victim! Euro-Atlantism in danger! Munchen split the West!

  • Current Events

    Why Iran with Nukes is a Danger – Just Look at Cuba in 1962

    When bridges divide more than rivers…

    Skopje Growth Plan Summit: Western Balkans Six Urged to Accelerate Reforms

    Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

    The NATO Summit in 2027 will be held in Tirana.

    Exclusive: “Even After Tito – Tito”/ Ambassador Zlatko Kramarić on Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy’s Future in the Balkans

    Geneva meeting begins in bid to halt escalating Israel-Iran conflict

    From Donetsk to Northern Kosovo: Geopolitical Games with the Kosovo Precedent

    G7 leaders fail to reach ambitious joint agreements on key issues after Trump’s exit

  • Top News

    The NATO Summit in 2027 will be held in Tirana.

    NATO allies agree to allocate 5% of GDP to defense by 2035

    Reza Pahlavi: “This Is Our Berlin Wall Moment” — Exiled Prince Calls for Global Support as Iran Nears Regime Collapse

    Where does Donald Trump stand on the Israel-Iran conflict?

    Russia Proposes Second Round of Ukraine Peace Talks in Istanbul on June 2

    International leaders congratulate Prime Minister Rama after his victory in the parliamentary elections, securing a fourth term.

    Albania’s parliamentary elections competitive and well run but lacked level playing field, international observers say

    Top Ukrainian delegation arrives in Paris for talks with Western officials

    Marta Kos: Albania Making Rapid Progress Toward EU Integration

  • YOUR VOICE
  • Shqip
No Result
View All Result
Argumentum
  • Home
  • OP/ED

    Azerbaijan dismisses claims of involvement in Israel-Iran conflict

    Elite Purges: Internal Conflict or External Design?

    Trump’s Threat of U.S. Intervention in Iran Exposes Roots of Critics’ Fears

    Crisis-Born, Purpose-Seeking: Can the EPC Define Europe’s Strategic Future?

    Serbia’s Request to the ICJ Turned Resolution 1244 into a Closed Chapter and Kosovo’s Independence into an Internationally Recognized Reality

    Unpredictable world

    Promoting Arab Culture and Language in the Framework of Cultural Diversity and Dialogue.

    ‘A Tragic Circus’: Albanian PD Figures Lash Out After LaCivita-Backed Campaign Collapses

    Erosion of Liberal Democracy in Europe Complicates Canada’s Search for Like-Minded Allies

  • Interview

    Exclusive: “Even After Tito – Tito”/ Ambassador Zlatko Kramarić on Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy’s Future in the Balkans

    The Conclusion of the Diplomatic Mission / Ambassador Dancho Markovski: Strengthening Albania-North Macedonia Relations for a Shared European Future

    A Century of Diplomatic Relations Between Albania and Russia: Exclusive Interview with the Russian Ambassador to Albania, H.E. Alexey Zaytsev

    Exclusive/ The chairman of the Freedom Party, Ilir Meta: “The will of the citizens will triumph in Albania, as it did in North Macedonia”

    Exclusive/ The Russian Ambassador to Albania Mr. Mikhail Afanasiev: Russia only aims to end that war started by the West in Ukraine

    Exclusive/ Skopje’s top diplomat to Tirana, Dancho Markovski: OSCE Chairmanship a Project of National Importance for North Macedonia

    Exclusive interview of Croatian Ambassador Zlatko Kramaric: ‘There is progress in Croatian-Albanian relations, but it is still not enough’  

    The first anniversary of the appointment as Archbishop at the head of the Catholic Church/ Mons. Arjan Dodaj: Only God can be the author of our walk!

    Azerbaijan’s Ambassador Anar Huseynov: President Aliyev’s visit to Albania opened a new page in our relations through the specific accords reached

  • Realpolitik

    Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

    Chancellor Merz passed “the exam”! Political stupidity! 5 per cent or study Russian! The Firing East!      

    A top phone call as disappointment! Exit from Brexit! Germany at the helm! End this political shame up!

    That’s it! The quartet of hope! Shame on Kosovo! The Summit of a Community without Identity!

    Only praises and prolises for Meloni! Facts versus untruths! Immediate ceasefire and genuine peace, no deal for new occupation! Back after 60 years !

    US nuclear tariff bomb!! Europa fires back! NATO ok, but with or without Article 5? Kallas urges reforms!

    Europe riarmed! Germany’s epochal shift! Spoiled soup! EU Commissioner Kos demands reforms!

    Europe tightens the ranks! The Euro-Atlantic Alliance in danger! USA-1945!! A true Peace, not new occupation!

    WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.  Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    The law of force over the force of law! Multilateral diplomacy is the victim! Euro-Atlantism in danger! Munchen split the West!

  • Current Events

    Why Iran with Nukes is a Danger – Just Look at Cuba in 1962

    When bridges divide more than rivers…

    Skopje Growth Plan Summit: Western Balkans Six Urged to Accelerate Reforms

    Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

    The NATO Summit in 2027 will be held in Tirana.

    Exclusive: “Even After Tito – Tito”/ Ambassador Zlatko Kramarić on Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy’s Future in the Balkans

    Geneva meeting begins in bid to halt escalating Israel-Iran conflict

    From Donetsk to Northern Kosovo: Geopolitical Games with the Kosovo Precedent

    G7 leaders fail to reach ambitious joint agreements on key issues after Trump’s exit

  • Top News

    The NATO Summit in 2027 will be held in Tirana.

    NATO allies agree to allocate 5% of GDP to defense by 2035

    Reza Pahlavi: “This Is Our Berlin Wall Moment” — Exiled Prince Calls for Global Support as Iran Nears Regime Collapse

    Where does Donald Trump stand on the Israel-Iran conflict?

    Russia Proposes Second Round of Ukraine Peace Talks in Istanbul on June 2

    International leaders congratulate Prime Minister Rama after his victory in the parliamentary elections, securing a fourth term.

    Albania’s parliamentary elections competitive and well run but lacked level playing field, international observers say

    Top Ukrainian delegation arrives in Paris for talks with Western officials

    Marta Kos: Albania Making Rapid Progress Toward EU Integration

  • YOUR VOICE
  • Shqip
No Result
View All Result
Argumentum
No Result
View All Result
Home ENGLISH

UK out, Albania in: Is EU ‘compensating’ for Brexit by expanding into the Balkans or countering an imaginary ‘Russian threat’?

8 February, 2020
in ENGLISH, English OP/ED
A A
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


By John Laughland

The European Commission decision to fast-track accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia, announced shortly after Brexit, shows the EU has lost its mind.

The proposed new wave of enlargement, which has been on the cards for years but has also stalled on several occasions, notably due to opposition from France, is evidently supposed to give a new impetus to the EU in the wake of Brexit. But the accession of two small, poor and crime-ridden Balkan territories is hardly compensation for the EU losing one of its biggest member states, one of its biggest contributors, the fifth largest economy in the world, its financial capital and its greatest military power. It is like swapping Manhattan for Managua.

Albania has for decades been notorious as a centre for drug trafficking. Numerous reports in the press last year commented on how the country has become “the Colombia of Europe” and “Europe’s first narco-state.” Yet, when the commission presented its plan to accelerate accession procedures, promising to make enlargement “a top priority,” not a single member of the European Parliament referred to the prevalence of the drugs trade in Albania, nor to the penetration of drug money into the very structures of the state itself.

North Macedonia has a less sultry reputation but 30% of its population is Albanian. Moreover, when the EU holds its Western Balkan summit in Zagreb in May, Kosovo is to be invited. A territory of Serbia which declared independence in 2008, it is over 90% Albanian and effectively operates as an adjunct to Albania proper. Indeed, in 2018, the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said he wanted to see Kosovo and Albania united by 2025, i.e. within the time frame envisaged for EU accession.

Expansion driven by geopolitics

This first wave of new member states is only part of a long-discussed plan of integrating the whole of the Balkans including Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina into the EU. 

The EU continues to maintain a military presence in Bosnia 25 years after the end of the civil war there, just as it pretends to govern Kosovo, and it has just voted to continue doing so indefinitely. In other words, the attention being focused on Albania and North Macedonia is only part of a bigger project which aims to bring the whole peninsula under EU and NATO control. North Macedonia is expected to join Nato next month.

It is impossible to understand what benefit the EU imagines it will draw from “compensating” for Brexit by expanding into the poorest and most unstable part of Europe unless one pays close attention to what the decision makers themselves say.  

The president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the new policy in a tweet with the hashtag #geopoliticalcommission.  In other words, the expansion into the Balkans is driven not by economic rationale but instead by geopolitics. 

Geopolitics is a theme dear to Mrs von der Leyen’s heart. In November, in her first speech to the European Parliament as president-elect of the commission, she said she wanted “a geopolitical commission” which is “not be afraid to speak the language of confidence and assertiveness.” 

Assertiveness and geopolitics used to be dirty words in the corridors of Brussels, which for decades pretended that it did not engage in power politics because it had instead ascended to a higher level of civilisation. In countless speeches, European leaders have contrasted Russia’s alleged “power politics” with their attachment to “a rules-based international system.” That, it seems, is all over now and the EU evidently intends to  openly pursue geopolitics (which also used to be a dirty word, especially in Germany). 

The first way that the EU intends to do this is by increasing its defence spending by a factor of 22 in the next financial period. Yes, you read that correctly, multiplied by 22, from €590 million to €13 billion in 2021-2027. As German defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen similarly campaigned for the German Army’s budget to be increased to nearly €50 billion a year, which would bring it very close to Russia’s, and for €130 billion to be spent on equipment over 15 years on new weapons. As president of the European Commission, she is now proposing to do under a European banner what for years she tried to do under a German banner.

EU continues to see Balkans as zone of zero-sum East-West conflict 

It is by no means anodyne that this geopolitical and military muscle flexing will be taking place primarily in the Balkans. EU leaders have convinced themselves of a number of fantasies about Russia’s role there, “interference” in North Macedonia, and even an “attempted coup” in Montenegro. The EU’s program of expansion is designed to counter this imaginary threat.

To this extent, the EU resembles the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, which saw political advantage, and a means to bolster its vanishing internal cohesion, in ratcheting up tensions with Russia. The annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 was just the most serious of many crises between Vienna and St Petersburg, as Austria chose to ignore Otto von Bismarck’s wise advice that the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. 

Of course, it would be foolish to predict that the EU’s expansionism will have the same effect as Austria’s did in 1914. Although the recognition of Kosovo in 2008 most certainly did enable Russia to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia later the same year, beginning a downward spiral in East-West relations from which Europe has still not recovered. But if the EU continues to see the Balkans (and Ukraine) as zones of an inevitably zero-sum geopolitical conflict between East and West, instead of a bridge between Europe’s two halves, as it seems determined to do, then the outlook is definitely gloomy./rt

Related Posts

Current Events

Why Iran with Nukes is a Danger – Just Look at Cuba in 1962

5 July, 2025
Balkan Overview

When bridges divide more than rivers…

3 July, 2025
Current Events

Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

30 June, 2025

Follow US

Subscribe

Receive Argumentum Magazine by Email

Last Posts

Why Iran with Nukes is a Danger – Just Look at Cuba in 1962

5 July, 2025

When bridges divide more than rivers…

3 July, 2025

Skopje Growth Plan Summit: Western Balkans Six Urged to Accelerate Reforms

1 July, 2025

Summit G 6+1! The historic Summit and Trump show! Zelensky loses 0:2! Winners and losers of the 12 day war!

30 June, 2025

Azerbaijan dismisses claims of involvement in Israel-Iran conflict

29 June, 2025
Argumentum

“Argumentum”, një proces intelektual …

Contact Us

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Follow Us

Media Partner

Register

Receive Argumentum Magazine by Email
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact

© 2022 Argumentum. All Rights Reserved. | NUIS: L91415033Q

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • OP/ED
  • Interview
  • Realpolitik
  • Current Events
  • Top News
  • YOUR VOICE
  • Shqip

© 2022 Argumentum. All Rights Reserved. | NUIS: L91415033Q

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.