Nations in Transit 2010: Albania

Freedom House has published the annual report “Nations in Transit 2010″ which  analyzes the progress’ level of Albania in terms of democratization in important areas such as: National Democratic Governance; Electoral Process; Civil Society; Independent Media; Local Democratic Governance; Judicial Framework and Independence; and Corruption, areas which are crucial to the fulfillment of the Copenhagen political criteria. It is the third consecutive year that EMA research staff works with Freedom House to produce this report.

Unfortunately Albania’s democracy score was worsened from 3.82 to 3.93 . The downward trends are related to: Independent Media, National Democratic Governance and Local Democratic Governance. The rating concerning the other fields remain unchanged while Corruption has the highest score of 5.00.

Nations in Transit 2010 is the 14th edition of Freedom House’s comprehensive, comparative study of democratic development in 29 countries from Central Europe to Eurasia. The overarching conclusion is that 2009 was a year of broad, cross-regional pressures on democratic developments: scores declined for 14 of the 29 countries. Six new EU member states, a number of which confronted rising nationalism, experienced declines, while one experienced gains. In the non-Baltic former Soviet Union, the ratings for six countries eroded, and one improved. And, in the Balkans, three countries improved and two saw their scores regress.