Albania Will Join the EU by 2030

The Republic of Albania will join the European Union by the end of the decade.

This is reported by ACP.al.

According to Isabel Santos, Albania's rapporteur to the European Parliament, the Balkan country is completing the verification process in record time.

According to Santos, "by 2030, conditions will be created to complete the European integration process". The MEP noted that "Albania's future is in the European Union". 

After reading the latest Albanian report authored by Santos, MEPs approved the document with 536 votes in favour, 54 votes against and 32 abstentions.

Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Oliver Varghelyi said that the verification process is expected to be completed in November this year. According to Varghelyi, Albania is the country that has done the most among the candidates for European integration to take the next step and has also made real progress on the ground.

The European Parliament's report calls Albania a reliable foreign policy partner and an important geopolitical ally thanks to the efforts of the official Tirana to develop regional cooperation and good neighbourly relations.

Albania applied for EU membership on 28 April 2009 and has been an official candidate since June 2014. Accession negotiations began on 19 July 2022. It is one of the seven current candidate countries for EU accession, along with Serbia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey and Ukraine.

As previously reported by The Gaze, according to a balance of payments assessment conducted by experts from the Bank of Albania (BSH), foreigners spent a record amount in Albania in the first quarter of 2023. The Balkan country showed that the expenditure of foreign visitors reached 624 million euros, which was a historical record.

This figure was almost twice as high as in pre-pandemic 2019 and 52% higher than in the first quarter of 2022.

According to the National Institute of Statistics of the Republic of Albania (INSTAT), the number of foreign nationals who entered the country during the first three months of 2023 reached 1,070,564. This number increased by 59.5% compared to the same period in 2022.

An additional reason for holidaying in Albania may be the fact that the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Albania voted to approve a bill to legalise the production of cannabis for medical and industrial purposes. The Ministry of Health of the Balkan country stated that the aim of the initiative is to regulate the control and supervision of the cultivation, production, processing, and export of medical and industrial marijuana.