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A change of leadership in Serbia is unlikely to soften Belgrade’s opposition to recognising Kosovo, a major obstacle to the country’s EU accession, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told the Euronews Enlargement Summit.
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Rama said the Student List, which won Serbia’s recent election, remained unwilling to discuss what he described as the “dearest subject” to Albanians.
“They are completely close towards recognising Kosovo, so this means that the music in Belgrade will not change,” he said during the event in Brussels.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and applied to join the EU in 2022. But the Serbian student movement, like almost all political forces in the country, considers Kosovo an “inalienable part of the Republic of Serbia” and opposes recognising its independence.
The dispute remains a major obstacle to Serbia’s EU accession. Brussels has long pushed for a “normalisation of relations” between Belgrade and Pristina as a crucial step towards easing tensions in the region.
Rama also criticised Serbia’s reluctance to align with other EU policies, notably sanctions against Russia.
“We need Serbia with us, as part of a neighbourhood that should be a whole part of the EU. But Serbia has to deserve that belonging, by delivering in full what is non-negotiable,” the Albanian prime minister said.
Turning to Albania’s own accession bid, Rama stopped short of setting a membership deadline but reaffirmed his commitment to concluding negotiations by the end of 2027.
Albania has been a candidate country since 2014 and formally opened negotiations in 2020. It is considered the second closest to joining the EU after Montenegro, although the process still appears far from complete.
“I have seen how the EU is able to not deliver in its promises; I have seen how the EU is able to deliver much more than you expect. So with the EU you never know,” he said.
While defending enlargement as a merit-based process and acknowledging that his country still faces challenges before it is ready, he invoked a “Helmut Kohl moment” for expanding the EU, referring to the chancellor who unified Germany.
“Europe needs to bring everyone around a table as part of the same family,” he said.
Rama, who has previously called for the partial integration of candidate countries into the EU as an intermediate step, compared them to the children of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who need to “stay around the table.”
“If you leave the kids in the neighbourhood, then your daughter will not come anymore at home because she falls in love with a Russian gangster and your boy…because he would like to play with Chinese toys,” he said, continuing the same metaphor.
Rama also took a swipe at the United Kingdom, which is seeking to reset relations with Brussels a decade after the Brexit referendum.
“The Brits should wait for now because we waited enough for them. So they are behind Montenegro and Albania,” he said.
