The effect of Greece on the accession process of Albania to the European Union

By this time Schuman declaration and the European Coal and Steel Community established, the European Union has made several expansion waves that in Continental Europe. Since the bloody situation in the dissolution process of Yugoslavia which created some security aspects for European countries, the Balkan countries established mutually close relations with the Western countries by the end of Cold War. In this context, especially the Thessaloniki and Zagreb Summits reflect the Balkan policies of the EU. The main purpose of the EU is to make the mentioned countries full members in near future and support their economies, energy politics and democracies in order them to integrate the European security system. Albania's first contact to establish relations with the European Union, was in 1991. Leaving communist and isolationist manner of rule, Albania tried to adapt her democracy to the post-Cold War global system. In the process, many bilateral agreements were signed between the European Union and Albania, then European Union has become one of the main supporters of Albania. In this context, following the reform process, the EU decided to start accession negotiations with Albania in 2019, however there is not any opened negotiation chapter as far as 2021. It's not only because of the lack of Europeanization attempts of Albania, but also due to Albania has to cross a hurdle of Greece which has undertaken the guiding mission of the Balkan geography for the European Union membership process. Albania, which requires the approval of all the European Union members for membership, betimes made concessions or accepted Greek solutions in order to figure out problems between two countries. Within this framework, it followed quite positive foreign policy for European Union and contributed to the Balkan cooperation. In this study, since the democratic era started which caused an evolution of Albania's foreign policy and its concord with the European Union acquis has been examined thanks to official reports of the European Union. In addition, the ongoing problematic issues between Greece and Albania are tried to be analysed. It has been come to a conclusion that Greece is trying to apply a foreign policy against Albania by playing the European Union membership card. Furthermore, the problems between the two countries, which could not be reconciled, were explained and it has been tried to explain that Greece plays the card of preventing the full membership of Albania in order to solve in favour of him the bilateral issues which comes from the history.