Source: European Parliament
In its 2023 Report on Albania[1], the Commission called on Albania to conduct the 2023 national population and housing census in line with the relevant international standards and recommendations, including those issued by the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe .
In the 2024 Report on Albania[2], the Commission noted that the legal framework for the protection of minorities is generally aligned with European standards and that the said census was completed in October 2023, and the preliminary results were published in June 2024.
In addition, in the statistics chapter of the 2024 Report (Chapter 18), the Commission called on Albania to publish detailed data and a thematic analysis of the population and housing census following the initial data release of June 2024.
The Commission is not directly involved in assessing the census procedure or in validating the census data. Furthermore, ethnic minorities are not part of the EU acquis on population censuses.
The conduct of the census will be reviewed by the competent international organisations, including as part of regular monitoring of rights of people belonging to minorities.
The Commission acknowledged[3] that in December 2024 Albania adopted the remaining implementing legislation on the rights of persons belonging to minorities, on the crucial issues of free self-identification of national minorities and the use of minority languages, welcoming this as a progress.
- [1] SWD(2023) 690 final, https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/document/download/ea0a4b05-683f-4b9c-b7ff-4615a5fffd0b_en?filename=SWD_2023_690%20Albania%20report.pdf
- [2] SWD(2024) 690 final, https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/document/download/a8eec3f9-b2ec-4cb1-8748-9058854dbc68_en?filename=Albania%20Report%202024.pdf
- [3] https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/albania/european-union-%E2%80%93-albania-16th-sa-sub-committee-meeting-justice-freedom-and-security_en?s=214