COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST: CASE OF ALBANIA IN THE EUROPEAN UNION PROCESS

Post-communist countries' processes on their way to the European Union (EU) have extensively proceeded simultaneously with their transition from communism to democracy. The regime change led to a process of "coming to terms with the past" in the sense that these countries took transitional justice measures for the crimes and practices of the former authoritarian regimes. In this regard, Albania is a case worth considering as a part of the current EU enlargement agenda. As a country that was not involved in the ethnic wars between the former Yugoslavian countries, Albania experienced a different historical pace of a communist past with its peculiarities. This article mainly aims to analyse Albania's coming to terms with its communist past and thus the transitional justice measures implemented in its EU process. The main argument of the article is twofold: First, EU impact was limited when Albania started its transitional justice period in the 1990s. This was due to the fact that progress in the EU process of Albania in terms of EU candidacy was enhanced in the 2000s and the impact of the strict EU conditionality became evident in these years as well. Secondly, the current international circumstances, in which the rivalry between Russia as well as China, and the West is at its peak in the so-called Western Balkans region, could allow Albania to be more closely aligned with the EU, which in turn may provide the necessary conditions for deeper reforms to come to terms with its past.