Why did European Union Grant Candidate Status to Albania?

Albania started its negotiation with the European Union with the initiation of the cooperation of the PHARE programme during early 1990s, right after the decline of the communist regime. The cooperation between Albania and the Union progressed gradually throughout the past two decades. Albanian‟s first official application for candidate status was noted back in 2009, but was rejected. The request for candidate status of the country got rejected three times in a row for distinct reasons, to get finally granted in summer of 2014. This study tries to analyse the reasons why the European Union granted candidate status to Albania in June 2014. This thesis evaluates different scholarly articles from different authors, commonly called content analysis. In the literature review of the study, the constructivist perspective emphasizes the security reasons that led the European Union grant candidate status to Albania and Europeanization perspective that points out the progress that Albania has already made in fulfilling the criteria.