by Albert Rakipi, PhD

In April 2026, Fincantieri, one of Italy’s foremost industrial and defense champions, signed an agreement with the Albanian company KAYO to produce vessels at the Pashaliman shipyard. Prime Minister Rama presented the project as part of a strategic partnership, noting that the new company would produce ships not only for Albania’s Armed Forces but for allied militaries as well. Fincantieri is no ordinary investor. In strategic weight it is comparable to Leonardo in defense or ENI in energy, and its presence in Albania therefore carries a significance that far exceeds a single business deal: it inserts Albania into a new industrial and security geography.

If developed seriously, Pashaliman can become far more than a shipyard. It can become the symbol of a new Italian approach to Albania: from crisis management to industrial partnership; from border control to maritime production; from migration anxiety to defense cooperation; from Albania as a fragile neighbor to Albania as a capable ally on NATO’s southeastern flank. This is why Fincantieri’s arrival should be read as a strategic question: can Italy finally see Albania not merely as a country to be stabilized, but as a platform with which to build influence, security and industrial capacity in the Adriatic and the wider Mediterranean?

For more than three decades after the fall of communism, Albanian-Italian relations have carried a striking paradox. No other European country has been closer to Albania in geography, culture, migration, trade, security and political imagination. Yet no other relationship has so consistently remained below its strategic potential. Italy was Albania’s first window to the West. During the long decades of communist isolation, Italian television, language, music, culture and lifestyle shaped the Albanian idea of Europe more than any official doctrine could. For many Albanians, Italy was not simply a neighboring country across the Adriatic; it was the visible West, the accessible Europe, the natural partner for Albania’s post-communist rebirth.

This explains why expectations after 1990 were so high, and why their partial disappointment carried a deeper moral weight. Ismail Kadare argued in the early 1990s that Italy had remained silent for too long about Albania’s suffering under one of Europe’s harshest communist regime. Through Italy, Kadare was in fact addressing the whole West, because for Albanians Italy had been its most immediate image. The hope was that, after decades of silence, Italy would now care for Albania almost as an elder brother.

Italy did respond generously in the early years, providing assistance, supporting institutional reconstruction and backing Albania’s Euro-Atlantic path. But Italy’s view of Albania was always more ambiguous than Albania’s view of Italy. After the collapse of communism, Albania was not primarily seen in Rome as an economic opportunity or a future strategic partner. It was seen above all as a possible source of instability. The first migration waves, weak state institutions, organized crime, trafficking networks and the political fragility of the 1990s turned Albania into a security concern. The neighbor across the Adriatic became less a country with which to build long-term projects and more a country whose risks had to be contained. This perception reached its peak in 1997, when the Albanian state nearly collapsed after the pyramid scheme crisis. Italy led Operation Alba, the multinational mission that helped restore order. It was a decisive and necessary intervention, and it demonstrated that Italy could play a major role in Albania when it chose to do so. But it also reinforced a doctrine that would shape the relationship for years: Albania was to be treated as a volatile neighbor to be stabilized, not yet as a serious partner to be developed.

The problem is that this logic persisted even after Albania changed. Albania stabilized. It joined NATO. It became a reliable partner in regional security and aligned itself with the Euro-Atlantic agenda. It no longer represented the kind of emergency that had haunted Italian policymaking in the 1990s. Yet the mental map in Rome changed more slowly than the reality on the ground. The relationship remained close, friendly and useful, but too often reactive, cautious and modest. The central question today is whether Italy has truly moved beyond the old doctrine of threat management toward a doctrine of strategic opportunity. The answer is not yet clear.

Politically, Albania and Italy enjoy excellent relations. There is no bilateral dispute. They share broad positions on foreign policy and security. Italy has consistently backed Albania’s NATO membership and its European integration, and Albania regards Italy as one of its principal advocates inside the European Union. The human relationship runs even deeper: more than half a million Albanians live and work in Italy, creating one of the strongest social bridges between the two countries. Albania has also shown exceptional trust toward Italy, the most recent and politically sensitive example being Tirana’s acceptance of the controversial agreement on Italian migrant processing centers in Albania, an arrangement offered to no other European country. Whatever one thinks of that agreement, it demonstrates the degree to which Albania is willing to accommodate Italy’s strategic and domestic concerns.

Yet the economic and industrial dimension tells a more complicated story. Italy remains one of Albania’s most important trade partners, and cultural, commercial and human ties are dense. But for a relationship so often described as strategic, Italy’s investment profile in Albania has been surprisingly limited, concentrated largely in trade, services, small and medium enterprises, fashion production, restaurants and other low- or medium-value activities. These are important, but they do not constitute a strategic partnership. A strategic relationship requires investment in strategic sectors: defense industry, energy, ports, infrastructure, maritime economy, logistics, transport corridors, advanced manufacturing, technology, education and professional training. At present, in the hierarchy of strategic FDI in Albania, Italy does not rank among the top five, where Hungary, Turkey, the Netherlands/Switzerland, and even distant Canada now stand out. Rebuilding a strategic relationship in education would, in a sense, mean going back to the future. It is enough to recall the Albanian scientists and professionals of the 1930s who were educated in Rome and Turin, among them Prof. Selaudin Toto, a distinguished scientist educated in Italy and founder of Albania’s Institute of Sciences. He was not the only one. Education, like industry and security, should return to the center of an Italian strategic policy toward Albania. It requires not only exchange, but transformation; not only proximity, but vision.

This is precisely why the Fincantieri project matters. It offers a possible departure from the old pattern. Instead of another chapter of symbolic friendship or routine economic presence, it can become the first pillar of a qualitatively different relationship: industrial, maritime, technological and strategic. Such a shift would also serve Italy’s own interests.

For years, Italy has struggled with the question of its role in the Balkans and the wider Adriatic space. At times Rome viewed the region through a fragmented lens, focusing heavily on Serbia as the Schwerpunkt of Balkan stability. For economic and strategic reasons this approach was understandable, but it often leaned toward preserving unsustainable arrangements, including support for the continuity of the Yugoslav Federation and later a cautious approach toward the Milosevic regime. In the long run, this weakened Italy’s capacity to act as a driver of regional change. Italy has also acted through EU mechanisms and intervened in moments of crisis, but it has rarely articulated a sustained regional vision. Yet Italy’s geography demands precisely such a vision. A country that wants to be strategically relevant in the Mediterranean cannot treat the Adriatic and the Western Balkans as peripheral spaces. On the map of strategic investments in the Balkans, Albania is not the only country where Italy does not appear as a strategic actor. The same is true of Serbia, the largest investment market in the Balkans, where Italy, although it remains an important and well-established investor, ranks roughly fourth or fifth, behind more aggressive actors such as China, Russia and others. From a geopolitical perspective, the vacuum created in part by the absence of a stronger Italian presence is being rapidly filled by third powers.

A truly strategic Italy needs a serious Balkan policy, and any serious Italian Balkan policy must place Albania near its center. Albania offers Italy something few countries in the region can provide simultaneously: geographic proximity, deep cultural affinity, a strong diaspora in Italy, political goodwill, NATO membership, a pro-European orientation, a long coastline, ports, maritime infrastructure and a consistent readiness to cooperate with Rome. It is difficult to imagine a more natural platform for an Italian strategy in the southeastern Adriatic.

This is where the idea of a new Italian Ostpolitik becomes relevant. Italy needs a policy that does not merely react to crises in the Western Balkans but projects long-term influence through integration, investment, industrial cooperation, security partnerships and support for EU enlargement. Such a policy would not be nostalgic geopolitics. It would be modern geo-economics and strategic statecraft.The Western Balkans are no longer simply a zone of instability to be managed. They are part of Europe’s security architecture, the EU’s enlargement debate and NATO’s southeastern space. They are also part of the wider contest over infrastructure, energy, ports, digital networks, supply chains and foreign influence. In this environment, Italy cannot afford a small Albania policy.

Nor can Albania afford a passive Italy policy. For too long, Albania has relied on the assumption that geography, history and affection would naturally produce a strategic relationship with Italy. They have not. Affinity is not strategy. Migration is not strategy. Trade alone is not strategy. Even friendship is not strategy unless it is translated into projects, institutions and long-term commitments. Albania must therefore define more clearly what it wants from Italy. It should not approach Rome only through the language of gratitude, cultural closeness or political support for EU integration. It should offer concrete strategic platforms: maritime industry, defense production, port development, energy cooperation, vocational education, university partnerships, infrastructure corridors and joint regional initiatives.

The Fincantieri project could become the foundation for such a platform, but only if Albania builds around it the necessary ecosystem: technical schools, engineering capacity, maritime training, defense procurement planning, port modernization, transparent regulation and protection from clientelist or short-term political interference. If Albania wants to be treated as a strategic partner, it must behave as a strategic state. The old formula of Albanian-Italian relations was built on proximity, emotion and emergency. The new formula must be built on industry, security, technology and shared geopolitical purpose. For decades, Italy asked what risks might come from Albania: migration, instability, crime, weak borders. These were legitimate concerns, especially in the 1990s. But they were defensive concerns. They answered the question of what Italy feared from Albania, not what Italy could build with Albania.

Now the question must be reversed: what can Italy and Albania build together? They can build a maritime industrial hub in the Adriatic. They can build a defense cooperation model within NATO. They can build a stronger southern axis for European integration. They can connect Italian industrial capacity with Albanian geography and human capital. They can turn Albania from a peripheral neighbor into a strategic platform for Italy’s role in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. But this requires political imagination on both sides. Italy must stop seeing Albania mainly through the old categories of migration, borders and risk. Albania must stop waiting for Italy’s attention as if historical closeness alone were enough. Strategic partnerships are not inherited. They are constructed.

For the moment, the Fincantieri project remains part of a strategic political imagination shared by both sides. The same was true of the Italy-Albania-United Arab Emirates agreement on renewable energy and the Vlora-Puglia submarine interconnector, worth around €1 billion, signed a year earlier, in 2025, with the involvement of Italy’s Terna and the UAE’s TAQA. But political imagination alone is not enough. As an Albanian proverb says, there is a whole sea between saying and doing.

King Zog once wrote that he did not fear a strong Italy; he feared a weak one. A strong Italy, he argued, was an Italy that wanted a stable, organized and independent Albania. That idea remains remarkably relevant. But today it should be taken further: a truly strategic Italy is one that sees Albania not only as stable and independent, but as useful, capable and necessary. And a truly strategic Albania is one that knows how to make itself indispensable.

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Albert Rakipi is Chairman of the Albanian Institute for International Studies and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania.

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In her 2023 State of the Union address, European Commission President von der Leyen asserted that the future of the Western Balkans lies in the EU. In doing so, it reiterated the EU’s promise made at the historic Thessaloniki Summit twenty years ago.

At the time, Yugoslavia’s devastating wars had just ended. International borders had changed with the independence of Montenegro and later Kosovo. And the wave of EU enlargement was about to happen, with ten Central and Eastern European countries joining in 2004, Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. The driving force behind this process was the powerful vision to reunify the European continent. But also a strong political will in the countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to become members of the European family. For similar reasons, the countries of the Western Balkans were equally motivated to join the EU.

However, after twenty years, the Western Balkans have still not joined the European Union. Sometimes it even seems that EU membership has become less attractive for the region than it was two decades ago. With the world and the EU facing a series of crises in the past two decades, the Union’s appetite for enlargement has waned. At the same time, some Western Balkan countries showed limited political will to implement much-needed EU reforms, giving EU enlargement skeptics arguments against their integration. In general, the enlargement process has proceeded at a slower pace and with less visible and tangible results than expected, leading to disillusionment and departure from the EU. The Union and the Western Balkans – wittingly or unwittingly – found an unsatisfactory modus vivendi.

The window of opportunity for geostrategic expansion

Since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, EU membership has become an even more attractive goal for the Eastern Partnership countries – Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. At the same time, the countries of the Western Balkans are facing unprecedented challenges to their stability as well as amplified foreign policy dilemmas. However, there is also growing awareness of a new window of opportunity for enlargement, raising expectations vis-à-vis the EU.

We welcome that the EU is now approaching enlargement from a more geostrategic and less bureaucratic perspective than before. Last year’s decision to grant candidate status to Bosnia and Herzegovina was based on strategic considerations. There is a growing recognition that enlargement policy is the EU’s most powerful stabilizing instrument. That said, the EU’s new strategic approach will not lower the standards of enlargement. Full implementation of the reform remains essential.

The current situation is an opportunity for both the European Union and the Western Balkans to show more strategic foresight, to fully regain their enlargement credibility and to reinforce mutual trust, some of which had been lost over the years.

In fact, some concrete steps should be taken without any further delay.

First, the European Union must open EU membership negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina by the end of this year. Second, Montenegro must continue its path of reform in the EU, which depends on the formation of the new government in the country. Thirdly, the negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia must be advanced. In North Macedonia, the next steps depend on the country’s ability to pass the necessary constitutional changes. The latest case is a reminder that EU member states and Western Balkan countries must play a responsible role and refrain. from the presentation of bilateral problems and disputes, which are not related to the accession process.

For a gradual and accelerated integration of the Western Balkans into the EU

On the EU side, the discussion on the necessary institutional and financial preparations for the integration of new members is gathering momentum. However, this should not become a pretext to delay the enlargement process for our Western Balkan partners. We need to start implementing existing proposals to speed up the enlargement process now.

EU institutions must be more creative in adapting the enlargement process to today’s needs. The process should be less complex and more results-oriented. We must make it more tangible for citizens and link the progress of the reform with concrete benefits. We also need to engage more dynamically with the countries of the Western Balkans, so that they can really feel the heartbeat of Brussels. From June 2022, there is a clear task from the European Council to advance gradual integration already during the enlargement process. In June 2023, as “Friends of the Western Balkans” together with our colleagues from the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and Slovakia, we called on the EU institutions to present a clear agenda for gradual and accelerated integration in steps concrete implementation until 2024 and beyond. This should be based on fair and rigorous conditioning as well as the principle of own merits. We see many possibilities, from more frequent invitations to our Western Balkan colleagues in the Foreign Affairs Council to the opening of other policy areas such as education, science, transport or trade for their gradual involvement.

The real value of EU enlargement lies in its transformative capacity: helping countries to raise living standards for their citizens and creating prosperous environments where young people can fulfill their dreams. Our Western and Eastern Balkan partners deserve this opportunity and EU citizens will benefit from greater stability and prosperity beyond the current EU borders. EU enlargement is not one of many political options; it is the geostrategic necessity of the day.

[1] By Tanja Fajon, Minister for Foreign Affairs and European Affairs of Slovenia, 

Alexander Schallenberg, Minister of European and International Affairs of Austria, 

Gordan Radman Grlic, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Croatia

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The news came at a press conference following the summit of leaders of 27 EU member states in Tirana with their Western Balkan counterparts, where Prime Minister Edi Rama had presented a strategic project to bring the College of Europe to Albania.

“Something fantastic we discussed, and we received support in principle from both the President of the Council and the President of the Commission, and as far as I understand the full support of the leaders is to work and have in Tirana the campus of the College of Europe,” Prime Minister Rama said during the joint press conference with President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel.

Von der Leyen said investing in the next generation that will share European values is more relevant than ever.

“Your vision [is] to have one day the College of Europe here, like in Bruges, like in Poland. And indeed, you have full support also from my side. This is something on which I hope that in due time, at one of the next summits, we will be able to say that we delivered,” von der Leyen said at the press conference.

The agreement in principle on the opening of College of Europe in Tirana was seen as a major outcome at the summit, and it “is among extremely concrete issues, which have a concrete impact” and “go beyond words,” said Michel.

College of Europe currently has two campuses, one in Belgium and one in Poland, and opening a third campus in Tirana is “extraordinary and historic” because it is another step in tying Albania permanently to the West, said Albert Rakipi, the chairman of the Albanian Institute for International Studies.

“Bringing the College of Europe to Tirana means bringing the first truly Western post-university educational institution since the creation of Albania’s modern state. It is the biggest development of its kind in education in 100 years, and will have the same impact in Albanian history as the pre-WWII French Lyceum in Korca and Harry Fultz’s American school in Tirana,” Rakipi said.

The College of Europe is the world’s first university institute of postgraduate studies and training in European affairs. It was founded in 1949 by leading European figures in the wake of the Hague Congress, which led to the creation of the European Movement. Its original campus is in Bruges, Belgium. A second Natolin (Warsaw), Poland campus of the college was established in 1992 ahead of Poland’s accession negotiations with the EU.

Tirana could soon host the third campus of the venerated institution in the Western Balkans, hoping to bring the same vision that it had in late 40s Western Europe and early 90s Eastern Europe.

“It is first and foremost a signal of hope, a symbol of the serious commitment that the EU has towards the region despite all the doubts cast by the delays and stagnation of certain milestones,” Rakipi said. “It will also bring forward academic, social and cultural cooperation between the countries in the region, with their peers in the EU as well as naturally foster the process of reconciliation.”

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