Albanian PM Edi Rama is in Germany to lobby among the ranks of the largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag, CDU / CSU for Albania to get a ‘yes’ for the opening of the first intergovernmental conference in the frame of accession negotiations with the EU.
But as DW has learned from the CDU / CSU parliamentary circles, neither the chairman of the Western Balkans parliamentary group from the CDU / CSU party, Johann Wadephul, nor the chairman of the EU Commission in the Bundestag, Günther Krichbaum, attended the meeting with Rama.
Earlier Albanian government head was in Turkey and Greece and there have been speculations as if he tried a mediation in the Turkish-Greek maritime dispute.
In the meantime so far, the usual skeptical EU countries, including Germany, are still not convinced that Albania deserves the opening of the first intergovernmental conference, says DW.
North Macedonia, as it’s reported, has made steps forward in this direction.
Regarding Albania the two most delicate points in the argument of skeptics from Germany are: the anti-defamation law and the changes made to the June 4 agreement on the electoral law in parliament, just days after the parties, the opposition and the government, agreed after the intervention of Western diplomats in Tirana.
“It will take a lot of diplomatic and political work until the first intergovernmental conference opens,” skeptics in Berlin were quoted as saying by DW on Thursday.
Albania has recently been praised by the German government for its commitment to mediating the Belarus conflict. But, unlike what was previously reported by some media in Tirana, Rama did not have a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, said diplomatic sources from Berlin. /argumentum.al
