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In Albania, real civic society is no longer in donor-funded conference rooms. It is in the streets.
By Mrika Temali
Tirana Times, June 16, 2026 – Thirty-five years after the fall of communism, Albania offers a bitter paradox. The European Union, Western governments and international foundations have spent millions indeed tens of millions in the name of building civil society, strengthening democracy, protecting civic space and empowering citizens. Yet, at one of the most dramatic political moments in the country’s post-communist history, much of what is officially called “civil society” is either silent, absent, or comfortably positioned within the orbit of power.
This is not a failure of terminology. It is a failure of democracy.
For decades, Albania has been home to an entire industry of democracy projects: seminars, capacity-building programs, consultation meetings, monitoring reports, donor strategies, public forums, roundtables on civic space, workshops on good governance, electoral integrity, anti-corruption, media freedom and European integration. A whole vocabulary of democracy has flourished. But the reality of democracy has withered.
The result is that a large part of Albania’s so-called civil society has become an institution in the service of the system it was supposed to scrutinize. It speaks the language of accountability, but avoids holding power accountable. It invokes citizens, but rarely stands with them when they confront abuse. It talks about civic space, while failing to defend the actual civic space where citizens gather, protest and risk confrontation with an arrogant state.
This does not mean that all organizations are compromised, or that all activists have been silent. That would be unfair and inaccurate. Even in a difficult and increasingly hostile environment, a small number of organizations and civic actors have tried to resist the general domestication of civil society. The Albanian Helsinki Committee has continued to raise its voice on human rights, freedoms and democratic standards. Qëndresa Qytetare has tried to mobilize society against corruption and the abuse of public power. In particular, a number of environmental organizations and activists deserve recognition for their persistence, courage and clarity. They have often been among the few to confront destructive development projects, defend public interest and give voice to communities ignored by power.
But these exceptions only make the larger failure more visible.
The dominant machinery of civil society the professionalized, donor-fed, access-seeking sector has largely failed to act as a democratic counterweight. Too often, it has preferred safety to truth, access to independence, and polite participation to public confrontation. It has been present in consultation processes, but absent in moments of civic courage. It has mastered the language of democratization, but often avoided the central political question of our time: the concentration of power.
The real civil society in Albania today is not found in conference halls. It is in the streets and squares of Tirana, in the towns of Albania, and in the capitals of Europe where Albanians in the diaspora have gathered to protest. It is made of young men and women, mothers with children, citizens who have no donor contracts, no policy briefs, no international visibility, but who have courage. They are protesting against a political system that is democratic only in form; against the arrogance of power; against a regime of captured institutions, stolen elections, weakened competition and kleptocratic rule.
They are the civil society Albania was supposed to build.
For years, Albanians have watched the fusion of state and party, government and business, public office and private enrichment. They have watched institutions lose independence, elections lose credibility, and public resources become instruments of political control. They have watched the country empty itself in a demographic exodus of biblical proportions. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have left , not simply in search of better salaries, but in flight from hopelessness, humiliation and the absence of a future.
And through much of this, the official civil society has remained largely silent.
It was silent when the state and power became one. It was silent when citizens lost trust in elections. It was silent when institutions became extensions of the executive. It was silent when arrogance replaced accountability. It was silent when Albania’s young people, the very human capital on which any democratic future depends, abandoned the country in tragic numbers.
Now, at precisely the moment when real civic courage is visible in the streets, we are invited once again to discuss “civic space,” “democratization,” “democratic backsliding,” “electoral integrity,” “media freedom,” “public consultation” and “protests as democratic expression.” The irony is almost unbearable.
It is not that such themes are unimportant. On the contrary, they are essential. But when they are discussed in a parallel universe, detached from the political reality of the country, they become part of the problem. They become a democratic ritual without democratic consequence. They produce recommendations, but not resistance; reports, but not responsibility; language, but not truth.
The Albania of official consultations and the Albania of citizens in the streets seem today to belong to two different worlds. One speaks in the polished vocabulary of European projects. The other speaks in the raw language of anger, dignity and fear overcome. One seeks procedural relevance. The other seeks freedom.
This should be a moment of serious reflection not only for Albania’s NGO sector, but also for the European Union and the wider West. If, after three and a half decades and enormous financial investment, the structures built in the name of civil society are unable or unwilling to confront democratic decay, then something has gone deeply wrong. This is not only Albania’s failure. It is also a failure of Western democracy assistance.
Too often, donors have rewarded form over substance. They have preferred predictable partners over courageous voices. They have financed the production of reports while ignoring the production of fear. They have confused professionalized NGOs with civic life. They have treated access to government as influence, and influence as impact. In doing so, they have helped create a class of civil society actors that are fluent in donor language but increasingly disconnected from society itself.
This is why the distinction matters. Albania does have civil society. But it is not necessarily where donors have been trained to look for it. It is not always in registered organizations, funded projects, policy networks or regional platforms. Sometimes it is in a village resisting the destruction of its land. Sometimes it is in young people denouncing corruption. Sometimes it is in environmental activists defending a lagoon, a forest, a protected area or a coastline. Sometimes it is in citizens who refuse to accept that public property, elections and institutions belong to those in power.
A civil society that cannot speak when democracy is under attack is not civil society. A civil society that fears losing access more than it fears losing freedom has already lost its mission. A civil society that monitors everything except the concentration of power is not protecting democracy; it is decorating its decline.
The protests in Albania have revealed something profound. Fear has begun to change sides. Citizens who were treated as passive, tired or defeated are showing that society is not dead. It was merely excluded from the official architecture of “civil society.” The boys and girls in the squares, the parents who bring their children, the diaspora that raises its voice abroad — they are not the footnotes of democratization. They are its main text.
For the European Union, this is a warning. Albania’s European future cannot be built on government narratives and NGO choreography. It cannot rely on reports that avoid naming the central problem: the capture of power. If the EU is serious about enlargement, rule of law and democratic transformation, it must look beyond the official theatre of reform. It must listen to citizens, not only to institutions. It must ask why a country praised for progress is producing such deep civic anger, such mass emigration, and such distrust of its own democratic order.
Albania does not need another vocabulary of civic space. It needs civic freedom. It does not need another consultation about democratic backsliding. It needs the courage to say that democracy has already been gravely damaged. It does not need civil society as an accessory to power. It needs civil society as a counterweight to power.
The streets of Albania are offering the clearest lesson in democratization today. It is not written in project documents. It is not moderated in online meetings. It is written on the faces of citizens who have decided that silence is no longer possible.
That is Albania’s real civil society.
And perhaps, after thirty-five years, it has finally returned.
