Motywacja UE do statusu kraju kandydującego Albanii

n/aAlbania was accepted by all EU actors to start accession negotiations in March 2020. This is several years after the European Commission had agreed in 2016 it can be granted EU talks. My interest is to find out why there is extended delay beyond even the 2019 date set by the European Council to take a decision on Albania. Since 2018, only specific members states had not yet agreed to launch negotiations. Attempting to explain what is happening in EU enlargement to Albania, it seems that a basic explanation exists whereby member states and commission are not on the same page as regards enlargement process incentive. This created several opinions on the process methodology itself, but also generated different perspectives on Albania. My thesis is a case study of Albanian candidate status, considering the cleavage that exists between member states and commission to move Albania beyond it. For this, I reviewed both Integration and Enlargement theories identifying the most adequate methodology to structure it. Consisting of a single case study comprises a short term period, the preference was then to use a model that would not require to explain a whole entire enlargement round, but one which could also be operationalized to identifying practical changes. The External Incentive Model choice therefore appeared as best suited, and my results support that the case displayed a shift toward more rational methodology during Albania’s candidate stage. Considering the four dimensions of the Incentive model (Determinacy, Credibility, Rewards, and Domestic Cost), at least three are argued to be strengthened and altogether balanced, using evidence from official sources like European Parliament debates, EU institution documents, country level documents, and journal articles. As a background timeline, the two time periods used distinguishes a time period when all EU actors where progressively on board, between 2016 and 2018, and a period that saw member-states progressively arriving at consensus on negotiations, between 2018 and 2020. After arguing that the enlargement process is increasingly rational, I compared this to the level of compliance criteria Albania most recently displayed. This allows to see if the priorities’ fulfillment are the main reasons why Albania was rewarded the negotiation status, and if it stood at the heart of EU disagreement. If not, then I identified reasons based on the initially recommendations from alternative enlargement literature, that from EU perspective the enlargement process decisions still follows a logic relying on values and ideas, rather than one based on rational decision-making. With that, I still propose to see increased rationalism and increased europeanisation as a basis on which this case study identifies a refinement logic aiming toward rationalism, though quite possibly because the negotiation status marks the real beginning of the accession process. Moving forward, the theory and the literature predict a logic transformation in direction from rational toward constructivist logic, yet, the most recent EU policies seem to constrain the possibility that Albania’s enlargement will scrutinize deeper criteria achievements to ensure all accession criteria will be fully met