Albania takes strides towards EU accession

[pampango]

Source: BBC

Many in Albania - which has Europe's fastest-growing economy and aspirations to join the EU - feel the former dictatorship has come a long way fast, reports the BBC's Paul Henley from Tirana. Lufti Dervishi is old enough to compare living in Albania today with how life used to be.

Whenever he thinks the road towards European integration is not a fast enough one, he stops to remind himself how far his country has come since it threw off what was the continent's strictest communist regime only 19 years ago. "I can remember the terrible things of the past", he says. "There were times when you could end up in prison just for learning English."

Nowadays, Mr Dervishi is executive director of Transparency International in Albania, working to establish a more democratic, prosperous country whose citizens feel integrated with Europe. "We have a new generation now and it has many aspirations," he says. "They expect Google, iphones, ipods and high-definition TV. And the country should look to this generation, not to mine."

"The country does have its problems," says Mr Dervishi. "There are standards we still want to achieve in order to become a member of the EU family. And when I talk about standards, I mean the rule of law. "We don't have the tradition of rule of law. For five centuries, Albania lived under the Ottoman Empire and for four and a half decades under the communist regime. So in that respect we are still in transition".

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8406675.stm

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I'm not sure how close Albania is to joining the EU, but they seem to be making fast progress. I can remember when it was one of the most reclusive communist countries.

[Diclotican]

1. pampango

Pampango

Wel, when you start at ZERO you tend to have one of the fastest growing economy regardness of that the fact that the country is dirt poor, and have a serious problem with crime, mafia and criminal organisations, who is making a living hell in the whole of Europe where albanian criminal groups have made it... It wil hopefully take decades before ALBANIA wil be invitated to join EU..

Albania have indeed a problem with the standard of LAW, the rule of LAW is more or less in its infancy and it wil take decades becouse you can talk about that the country is a part of european rule of law.. But to claim that others, be it ottomans or communist of the past for their own problems today is so typical Easten European attitude about the current world..

Norway who have rejected EU twice (1974 and 1994) wil have been a member of EU long before Albania wil be invited to the club.. The fact is that Albania of today, is similar to what Norway was in 1905 when Norway was one of the poorest country in Europe, maybe even the world..

I for one wil be really suprised if Albania was part of EU before Norway..

Diclotican

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Yes, "fastest growing" can be an example of lying with statistics

If you're unemployed and all you made this month was $100 shoveling snow for the neighbors, and then next month, you get a job that pays $1000 a month, your income will have grown 1000%, but you'll still be desperately poor.

But if one of the Wall Street "geniuses" earns $10,000,000 a year in salary and he is denied his annual bonus of $10,000,000, he might complain that his income has shrunk 50%, but he's still vastly more wealthy than the guy who is making $1,000 a month.

[pampango]

3. You're right. Albania has to be the poorest country in Europe by far. I'm glad their economy

is growing relatively quickly, but it has a long, long way to go.

Their per capita income is about $6,000. When Romania and Bulgaria entered the EU in 2007 their per capita incomes were a little more than $12,000. It will take Albania a long time to anywhere near the economy that those other two had before they were admitted to the EU. (As a reference, Mexico's per capita income is about $15,000; the US about $47,000 roughly the same as Germany and France.)

[New Dawn]

4. The right-wing thug (Berisha) who rules Albania just stole the recent election there this year.