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Klodiana Beshku

Jean Monnet Fellow

Beshku KlodianaEmail: [email protected]

Tel. [+39] 055 4685 724 

Office: Villa Schifanoia, VS079

Biographical Note

Dr Klodiana Beshku is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tirana. She studied Political Sciences/International Politics at the University of Siena (Magister) and holds a Joint Master’s Degree in European Studies “The Process of Building Europe” from the University of Siena and University of Strasbourg Robert Schuman III. She received her Doctorate in Geopolitics from the University of Pisa in 2011 with a thesis on the EC/EU’s Response to the Dissolution of the Ex-Yugoslavia.

She was Student of Excellency, a status given from the Albanian Ministry of Science and Education (2009), Adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a LEAD Albania Fellow (2015-2016) and received a Civil Society Scholar Award from Open Society (2018). She was Editor in Chief of the Scientific Journal “Politikja” of the University of Tirana (2011-2017) and lately Coordinator of a Jean Monnet Module “Resilience and European Integration of the Western Balkans” (2017-2020) from the Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission.

She has co-edited “Albania and Europe in a Political Regard” (Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2013) and “Shtetformimi, Demokratizimi dhe Europianizimi i Ballkanit Perëndimor” (Statehood, Democratization and Europeanization of the Western Balkans, Edlora, 2018). She has participated in many international conferences/workshops and published several articles and policy papers in the fields of European Integration, Foreign Affairs and Geopolitics.

 

Research Project

Transformation of the EU Conditionality and the struggle for Consolidation of the Democracy in the Western Balkans

As a Jean Monnet Fellow (2020-2021), Klodiana Beshku studies the link between the transformation of the EU’s Conditionality Policies and the contextual situation within its member states to the developments in the Western Balkan countries. The refusal of the European Council in October 2019 to open accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia paved the way to an old debate within the EU: The effective EU Conditionality and the proper transformation of the Stabilization and Association Process with the Western Balkans. This debate expelled all France and Germany’s old take of positions with the first opposing the opening of negotiations and the second in favour of it.

Under the push of the EU’s Political Conditionality - the main instrument which the EU has to strengthen Democracy and Rule of Law in the Region - the Western Balkans Countries have initiated some very important reforms which wouldn't have been possible otherwise, but they have continuously failed to be make these reforms become effective and 'real'. The implication is that, by closing an eye to state-capture, clientelism and corruption in the Western Balkans, the EU has influenced the creation of a kind of “shadow democracy” instead of a true Europeanization and Democratization of the Region. Thus, her project analyses the EU’s response to the discrepancies between democratic reforms and strengthening of democracy in the Western Balkans, addressing the BREXIT question and the third actors’ influences - US, Russia, China and Turkey – in the Region, as well.

 

 

Page last updated on 30 March 2021