Tahiri: With this government, Kosovo should remove EU membership from its list of goals

Alliance Vice-President Besnik Tahiri said that the European Commission’s negative assessments and the lack of progress in considering Kosovo’s application for candidate status showed that EU membership had become a goal that had effectively been abandoned in practice.

He blamed Albin Kurti’s government, which, he said, had failed to make progress in the European integration process.

“I listen to the Prime Minister talking about the country’s integration into the EU at a meeting of the General Council of the Self-Determination Movement—it is laughable. Anyone with even a basic understanding of the European integration process knows that there can be no progress in any area as long as the European Commission continues to assess the country’s progress negatively in its annual reports. This also applies to the application for EU candidate status submitted by this government, which has not only failed to move forward but, by all indications, is not expected to do so,” Tahiri said.

In a post on Facebook, he said that had the European Commission’s annual assessments been positive, the EU’s silence could have been interpreted as a political calculation.

“However, when the assessment is disastrous, this amounts to an indirect rejection of this national objective. You cannot seek membership in a club while failing year after year to meet its criteria. This is no longer merely a standstill in the process; it is a failure of the state’s European integration policy. Under such circumstances, European integration risks becoming nothing more than a political slogan, while EU membership becomes a goal that has effectively been abandoned in practice,” Tahiri wrote.

He therefore concluded that, with the current government in power, Kosovo should remove European integration and EU membership from its list of goals.