EU Regional Policy and Countries in the Edge EU-Accession: The Case of Albania’s Path Toward Regional Development

The EU requires potential member states to demonstrate development and commitment to regional equality, stability, and good governance. However, development is influenced by various factors, and unforeseen events can alter it on a large scale. While events suchas the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the persistent issues posed by climate change have made development processes increasingly challenging to anticipate, posing obvious warnings that governments, and the EU as an organization, to brace themselves for additional development hiccups in the future.In front of these challenges, Cohesion Policy has been at the heart of the European response to the crisis since the epidemic broke out in Europe(Musiałkowska, Potluka, & Idczak, 2020). This has helped the EU's economy towards recovering while current programs from the 2014–2020 era have been strengthened and modified to help sectors and areas that have been severely impacted by the crisis, demonstrating their responsiveness.The newly reformed rules, as per 1 July 2021, are designed to strengthen the focus of Cohesion Policy on a "smarter" and "greener" Europe, as well as to create favorable conditions for investment through simplified delivery mechanisms and closer links to structural reforms. However, this shift towards a "smarter" and "greener" Europe also poses its own challenges, especially for countries striving towards becoming members of the EU. (Reynolds, 2022). On the other hand, as the enlargement ambition of EU iscurrently a hot topic, the shifting of European policies might impose greater uncertainties for the countries striving towards becoming members of the EU.Regional policy becomes a crucial factor in their pre-accession process, especially to countries such as Western Balkan ones, which are often prone to continuous transition and path dependencies from the past governance system. Albania is one such country, and it has a significant challenge in balancing its need for regional development as a prerequisite for EU membership with its need for a better governance structure, which would accelerate the lengthy route to EU membership. The country's discussion on regional development has been on and off for the past sixteen years. The country's discussion on regional development has been on and off for the past sixteen years, with uncertainties still remaining regarding whether to pursue regional development policy or regionalization.(Imami, Bejko, & Shutina, 2019)This paper seeks to put into context the critical position of countries such as Albania, which is on the verge of joining the EU, and the enormous need to deal with regional policies as a policy prescribed by EU accession requirements on the one hand, and the need to respond to domestic needs in theface of uneven development patterns at the regional and local levels on the other.