Weekly Briefing, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Al), March 2021
Albania – Italy relations: some Mediterranean waves of good partnership
Summary
If there is a country where Albanians feel at home, without being in their own, that place is Italy! The other side of the Adriatic has meant for half a century a promised land, a safe harbor and countless opportunities, and as soon as they could, Albanians crossed the sea and reached it. In March 2021, Prime Minister (PM) Edi Rama visited the coastal city of Bari in Italy. The same city exactly 30 years prior witnessed the arrival of the first wave of Albanian migrants. This briefing is an overview of what Italy means to Albania and Albanians, with focus on the past three decades.
Introduction
In a trip down memory lane, the Albanian PM visits the Italian southern city, with messages of gratitude and acknowledgment of what the western neighbors have done for his country. Pictures of thousands of Albanian’s displayed on a special museum in Bari, recall and remember those days when Italy and Italians opened their country and their homes to the people of their “mysterious” and isolated neighbor. Three decades later the Italian impact on Albania can be seen everywhere from food to clothing, from architecture to way of doing business, from education to the very lifestyle of the people.
Italy and Albania: past and present of a particular bilateral relation
As of latest data available there are around 800,000 Albanians living in Italy, and if we put this number into perspective is about 30% of the total existing population of Albania currently.
It all started on the 6th of March 1991 – the day when at least 25 thousand Albanians boarded the ships they could find, breaking the first wall of the isolation. Extreme poverty, the desire for more freedom, for a better life, prompted Albanians to flee their homeland. For week, dozens of vessels, from fishing boats to trans-oceanic liners, carried thousands of citizens to the other side of the Adriatic.
This was not the first time Albanians left their home to reach the shores of Southern Italy; there exists a large community of Albanians there (Arbëreshë) who fled from Albania between the 14th and the 18th centuries in consequence of the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans. During those times, they settled in Southern Italy in several waves of migration, following the gradual conquest of Albania and the Byzantine Empire by the Ottomans.
The 20th century was more about Italians going to Albanian shores – the fascist invasion of Albania occurred in 1939, a brief military campaign by the Kingdom of Italy against the (then) Albanian Kingdom. The conflict was a result of the imperialist policies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Albania was rapidly overrun, its ruler forced into exile, and the country was made part of the Italian Empire as a protectorate in personal union with the Italian Crown. In September 1943, when Italy left the Axis and the fascist capitulation occurred, German troops immediately occupied Albania.
Although in a few years of occupation, the Italians shaped most of the architecture and urbanistic scene of Albania. Until today the main boulevard of the capital has Italian buildings on both sides, and on those buildings the governance of Albania is decided (municipality, ministries etc.).
From 1945 to 1991, however the anti-fascist narrative prevailed, at the end Italians were seen as the ones who occupied the country, yet compared to the ferocity of the next invaders (the Nazis) Italians were seen as less harmful. In those year of isolation from the rest of the world, in Albania some Italian television programs were allowed, making Italy so the only window for Albanians to the “Western world”.
The turning point
In the early 1990s, Italy embodied the very aspirations of Albanians and their eagerness to embrace the West. The fact that during the Hoxha regime Italian television was Albanian people’s main window on the capitalist world played a key role in the identification of Italy with the West and as a land of unlimited consumerist satisfaction. Of course, Italian media offered Albanian people a very simplified and illusory account of Italian society; a portrayal that privileged dramatically the apparent universal access to a post-industrial utopia of consumption, recreation and leisure. The migratory crises of the 1990s inaugurated a new phase in the history of relations between Italy and Albania, coinciding with a reformulation of the ways in which the two countries have imagined themselves and one another. [1]
During the period 1991–99, ‘Albanian’, ‘immigrant’, ‘arrested’, ‘public force’, ‘clandestine’, ‘extra-EU immigrants’ (extracomunitari), ‘drugs’, ‘refugee’ were found to be the most-frequently used words in the Italian media[2] – making it so very difficult for Albanians assimilate.
For Italians the “other” was a close and easy target. As two Albanian scholars would argue: “after the disappearance of the threat posed by the ’empire of evil’, the West suddenly faced a new challenge, uncontrollable migration. This was targeting those values that Westerners considered most essential and untouchable: wealth, welfare, work, space, property, ethnic integrity, health. Many countries framed this threat through different myths; in Italy (…) Albania was chosen. [3]
Luckily for Albanians, the turn of the millennium started ameliorating the situation, mostly because Albanians started integrating into the Italian society extremely well; and secondly because there were new “others” to be the target from the media. Very soon Northern Africans and emigrants from the new European Union (EU) member states as of 2007, Bulgaria and Romania, became the object of prejudice.
After the financial crisis of 2008, Italy is always declining as a preferred state for Albanian migrants. New generations targeted initially the United Kingdom and as of the last decade, the new destination became Germany.
What Italy means to Albania in geopolitical terms
With the decrease on number of Albanians choosing Italy as their destination for migration, so did the Italian influence in Albania, but mainly in terms of “Soft Power” – for the rest (political and economic) the Italian presence in the country is still solid. Numerous ministers, starting with PM Edi Rama, speak Italian and the knowledge of the Italian language is still widespread, even if it has gradually lost ground in the face of English, now dominant in the younger age groups due to the advent of widespread internet and of social media being mainly in English language.
Frequent high-level contacts between both the governments can be seen. Significantly, the two countries share similar political views regarding the Balkans. Italy remains one of the largest donors for Albania (by financing many projects, including sectors as judicial, energy, tourism and political). It is also the most fervent supporter of Albania’s integration to the EU. Not coincidentally, the EU Ambassador to Albania is usually an Italian citizen, giving so importance to the Italian know-how for their neighbor.
Most of all people-to-people ties have placed restrains to politicians as well. Indeed, due to the large positivity of Albanians towards Italy, Albanian politicians have to follow (at least on words) the good partnership path, and the current PM is no exclusion. We are not very well aware how truly fond Edi Rama is of Italians and Italy, one thing is for sure that he is always well-received in Italy.
Former Italian PM, Romano Prodi, as of 2020, argues for his country that there is the need for greater attention to Albania. He states that a more intense relationship between Italy and Albania will certainly not remedy the overall fragility of the Italian presence in the Mediterranean, but it will at least not weaken the few positive situations in which Italy still operates. [4]
Economy and interdependence
In the early 1990s, Italy immediately became the influential foreign power in Albania, as well as the major foreign investor, and the largest bilateral donor. At the dawn of the 1997 crisis, around 500 Italian entrepreneurs were operating in Albania, employing nearly 60,000 Albanians.
As for the latest data available, Italy is Albania’s first trading partner (for 25 years consecutive) and trade with Italy exceeds 20% of the Albanian GDP. Currently more than a thousand Italian companies operate in Albania and almost thirty thousand Albanian companies are active in Italy, even if many of them are very small size. Italy holds a 34.1% share of the total commercial exchange of Albania, with a 48.2% share of the volume of exports; it is also the leading supplier of Albania with 27.3% of imports.[5]
Italy plays a predominant role in the Albanian economic reality, with interesting prospects for Italian entrepreneurs. Italian companies have traditionally represented more than half of all foreign companies active in Albania, constituting an important slice of the Albanian production and employment system. Medium-large industrial groups have established themselves mainly in the energy, cement, agri-food and banking sectors.
Finally, it is important to notice that the friendly cooperation of Albania with Italy is also somehow naturally imposed given the fact that if we analyze the borders of south, east and north of Albania, not much can be achieved.
Conclusion
We owe Italy a great debt of gratitude as a people and as a nation– these were the words of the Albanian Minister of Foreign Affairs when meeting her Italian counterpart Luigi di Maio, after he met with PM Rama. The Albanian delegation visiting Bari was not really necessary, it was cordial but not essential to the times. Rama and his ministers are trying to get as much international approval as they can, given the very fiery electoral campaign, and of course some more sympathy from the families of the Albanian migrants in Italy would never hurt, at the end those sympathies could translate in votes.
[1] Mai, N. (2003). The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: migration dynamics, strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism. Modern Italy, 9(1), May 2003, pp. 77-93. Reterived from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1353294032000074098
[2] Ibid.
[3] Vehbiu, A., & Devole, R. (1996). La scoperta dell’Albania: gli albanesi secondo i mass media (Vol. 22). Retrieved from https://libri.albanianews.it/libro/scoperta-albania-albanesi-mass-media/
[4] Romano Prodi (2020, August 15th). Il caso Albania/ I rapporti nel Mediterraneo che servono al Meridione. Il Messagiero. Retrieved from https://www.ilmessaggero.it/editoriali/primopiano/romano_prodi_il_caso_ albania_i_rapporti_ nel_mediterran eo_che_servono_al_meridione-5405655.html
[5] Italian Embassy in Albania (2020, February 1) Cooperazione economica. Retrieved from https://ambtirana.esteri.it/ ambasciata_ tirana/ it/i_rapporti _bilaterali/cooperazione_economica