The uninvited

The uninvited always miss out. At the recent gathering of Balkan leaders and European officials in Athens, the one who missed out was the one who wasn’t in the photo.

The attendees demonstrated their lines of communication with the European Union from the capital of its oldest member-state in the Balkan neighborhood. The absentee has reason to feel like an outcast. Yet if the purpose of such a gathering was to highlight Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s absence, then there is a notable dose of flattery in his exclusion. So much fuss for the sake of stigmatizing Albania?

It has only been six months since Athens’ Zappeion Hall hosted an exhibition of Rama’s art – which left visitors scratching their chin in uncomfortable wonder – and that had come just a couple of months after Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ visit to the predominantly ethnic Greek Albanian city of Himare – the first by a Greek prime minister in 30 years.

What happened in the meantime to explain the abrupt shift in climate between the two countries? One could argue that Rama has not stopped being himself. As the case of jailed Himare mayor-elect Fredi Beleri has demonstrated, even the rapprochement has not been sufficient to improve communication between Athens and Tirana.

Albania appears to have graduated belatedly to the nouveau-riche frenzy that has taken over many post-Soviet states. It believes itself to be galloping toward a Western-style model of growth

The fact is that there is no common language between the two states. A simple phone call to address matters before they turn into tension is not on the cards. Zappeion was in vain.

Albania appears to have graduated belatedly to the nouveau-riche frenzy that has taken over many post-Soviet states. It believes itself to be galloping toward a Western-style model of growth and hopes to strike gold with tourism, where the property rights of the ethnic Greeks stand in the way. It believes that runaway growth is a short cut to becoming a country that the international community takes seriously, even though it has failed to meet almost every other Western standard.

Albania is playing an opportunist’s game and Greece’s poor handling of relations with the ethnic Greek community in that country may have helped it do so. Were Albania a more reliable neighbor, however, the Beleri affair would never have been allowed to evolve into the crisis it is today.

The meeting in Athens constituted an unequivocal declaration on Greece’s part: We are the gate to Europe, it said.

If that was indeed the message, then Greece is confirming that it knows what the Balkans expect of Athens. Now we need to see what we expect of the Balkans too.