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| Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Edi Rama in Albania, May, 2022 |
The Greek newspaper 'Kathimerini' wrote in a recently published article titled 'Greece Under EU Pressure for Albania' that intensive diplomatic consultations are taking place with Greece with the aim of convincing it to send a letter on behalf of the European Council to Tirana, so that Albania can open negotiations for the first three chapters.
The relevant discussion is expected to take place at the Permanent Representatives meeting in the EU (Coreper) on Wednesday (today, November 29), after Albania successfully completed the first phase of the EU accession negotiations (the screening process) last Friday after 14 months of consultations.
It is not a secret that Athens is under pressure, writes Kathimerini, citing European diplomatic sources who have stated that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared through diplomatic channels that the accession process should not be a bilateral issue. Moreover, according to a European official, even the Spanish presidency of the EU appears particularly irritated by the Greek stance, writes the Greek newspaper Kathimerini.
In this context, diplomatic sources say that Greece cannot continue to block the letter for a long time after the completion of the Albania review process. Due to this, and if Athens ultimately decides to send the aforementioned letter from the European Council, it is considering the possibility of "blocking" the next phase of the relevant process, which includes a report describing all the standards that Tirana should have already met (the permanent accession report), as well as the call for a relevant intergovernmental conference.
Greece has pledged to block Tirana's EU aspirations until the issue of the elected ethnic Greek mayor Fredi Beleri, imprisoned since May in Albania, is resolved, emphasizing that his human rights are being violated.