BRUSSELS – Albania opened Cluster 2: Internal market on 14 April, at its fourth intergovernmental conference with the European Union. Following the opening of Cluster 1 and Cluster 6 last year, Albania has now opened negotiations on an additional nine chapters.
The chapters within Cluster 2 cover EU regulations on the internal market, which includes free movement of goods, services, people and capital, company law, intellectual property law, competitiveness policy, financial services and consumer and health protection.
The Council of the EU, which is composed of the governments of 27 EU Member States, gave the green light for Albania to open these chapters and also set the benchmarks for the provisional closure of these chapters.
According to Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, the goal of the country is to open and then close all negotiating chapters by 2027.
“It’s really super ambitious, but we are here today to reaffirm our strong will, our firmness and our full passion to achieve this goal”, Rama said in the press conference following the meeting with Member States.
Representing the Polish Presidency, Radosław Sikorski, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that in the current challenging geopolitical situation, enlargement remains at the front of the EU’s policy agenda.
“The Polish Presidency supports a merit-based enlargement of the EU, and now more than ever, welcoming new members is a geostrategic investment in pace, security, stability and prosperity. The objective of the Polish Presidency is to make overall progress in the enlargement process, both in the Eastern direction and with regard to the Western Balkans”, Sikorski said.
He congratulated the citizens of Albania for the step taken.
“I hope that in the coming months, we will be able to host more IGCs with the candidate countries. We have an ambitious agenda for the rest of our Presidency, including Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro and others. I am sure that in such a strategically important issue as the future shape of the EU, we will find a common denominator”, Sikorski said.
Speaking at the press conference, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said that Albania is really a success story of our enlargment process and that she hoped this was the first of several celebrations this year.
“My call to action is that we should celebrate every small step, which is now more important than ever, and we would like to open all negotiating clusters and also start closing chapters. So the plan is that we open all clusters and within the next year we start closing them”, she said.
Kos added that the opening of Cluster 2 should be viewed from a very important international perspective.
“While tariffs and protectionism are coming back in many parts of the world, our work in this Cluster is about breaking down barriers to trade, it is about improving competitiveness, it is about securing high product standards, it is about more economic opportunities for the both sides. And it is about more prosperity for everyone”, Kos said.
She added that to achieve the goal of membership for Albania in 2030, political commitments need to continue, especially in critical areas such as justice reform, judicial independence, property rights, minority issues, and freedom of expression.
“Meeting the interim benchmarks depends on this”, Kos said.