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The government declares Kosovo Minister Donika Gërvalla "non grata"
2026-03-21 22:59:33 / POLITIKË
Edi Rama has not been able to forgive Kosovo's Minister of Justice, Donika Gërvalla, for her harsh statements against the joint letter between our prime minister and the president of Serbia, in which both asked the EU for membership without full rights for the two countries in the Union.
Gërvalla, who held the position of head of diplomacy in the previous government, declared to public television in Pristina that "the citizens of Kosovo will not forgive Prime Minister Rama for that article, because the impression is created time and time again that, when Europe has Vučić leaning against the wall, Edi Rama comes out and gets him out of that situation."
As if this were not enough, Cabinet Minister Kurti continued: "There should be no alternatives for Albania with Serbia that do not pass through Kosovo. The road from Tirana to Belgrade leads through Pristina, both geographically and economically, and in every aspect. So, every Albanian prime minister or president who forgets this, know that in the long run they will make big mistakes that will harm our nation even more."
Just two days after this interview by Gërrvalla, a source within the foreign ministry, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to Lapsi.al that his boss Ferit Hoxha, newly appointed to that position, has been ordered by Rama to prevent any official visit to Albania by Gërrvalla. In implementation of this order, foreign minister Hoxha held an online meeting on Thursday with Albanian ambassadors accredited to countries in the region.
In addition to confirming to them that a group of EU member states have blocked the IBAR report, slowing down the negotiations for the closure of Albania's chapters, Hoxha, who presents himself as a technical minister, did not forget to convey Rama's political order to the ambassadors. "How can she dare to criticize our prime minister," said the foreign minister, according to a Lapsi.al source who was present at the online meeting. "You must be careful that Gërvalla is not given any opportunity for an official meeting in Albania," was the message that was addressed more to the ambassador in Pristina, Petrit Malaj. A few hours after the publication of this news, Ambassador Malaj issued a formal denial, without talking about the development of Thursday's online meeting. "The embassy does not confirm anything like this. Various speculations often circulate in the media, which we do not comment on further. There is no such decision or instruction," he said, in a statement distributed in Tirana by the prime minister's press office.
Opposition leader Berisha also reacted against this act, which he considered scandalous and worthy only of Rama's personal state, which treats ministers and ambassadors as his servants: "This Vučić's servant has ordered embassies not to have any kind of meeting with the Minister of Justice of Kosovo, Donika Gërvalla, because she publicly and courageously denounced the joint Rama-Vučić letter.
He goes so far as to demand that she not come here when most likely Donika is also an Albanian citizen, since she came here as a child and grew up in Albania," he said.
In fact, the joint article with the Serbian president has aroused many reactions in the Albanian world. In a joint editorial in the well-known German newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” Rama and Vučić asked the EU for membership in the Schengen Area and the Single Market, but without veto rights and without having ministers in the Commission and MEPs in parliament. Through this move, Rama and Vučić sought to bypass the “veto trap” of any EU country by allowing those candidate countries that meet the conditions to enter the European Common Market and the Schengen Area, instead of striving for full political membership in the EU. According to them, “such an approach would not burden the EU’s decision-making architecture and would not (…) change the EU’s institutional balance. It would not include granting veto rights, additional commissioners, additional members of the European Parliament or changes in voting structures” – Rama and Vučić argued.
“Extending participation in these frameworks (Schengen and the Common Market) to prepared candidate countries could bring tangible benefits to citizens, while simultaneously strengthening the Union's economic and geopolitical position,” their article stated.
But if in Tirana this letter was commented more as a maneuver to not meet the strong criteria of Brussels, in Pristina it was criticized as a handshake for Vučić, whose country is far behind in the negotiations also because of the positions it holds towards Russia and Kosovo. It was precisely on this point that it was also hit by Donika Gërvalla, who is now "non grata" for the Rama government.
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