Albania’s New Foreign Minister: A First Week That Answers the Big Question

16.03.26

Ferit Hoxha took office with a phrase rather than a programme — “national interest as the guiding principle.” Nine days later, the phrase has content.

by Aurel Cara (Tirana)

What kind of foreign minister is Ferit Hoxha? His first nine days in office, spanning 6 to 15 March, offer a remarkably legible answer. Not because the agenda was crowded — first weeks always are — but because of what he chose to do on the very first day, and what that choice reveals about his instincts as a minister.

On the morning his mandate formally began, the first item on his desk was not a courtesy call, a bilateral photo opportunity, or a speech at the Foreign Ministry. It was a crisis management session convened around the security situation in the Middle East, with a specific brief: account for Albanian nationals in the region, assess their needs, and begin moving them out. Hundreds of Albanian citizens were ultimately assisted in leaving conflict zones. That is not the reflexive first act of a minister reaching for visibility. It is the instinct of someone who treats consular protection as a primary function of the foreign service — unglamorous, operationally demanding, and entirely correct.

The rest of the week flowed from that same logic. A sequence of phone calls with the foreign ministers of Kuwait, Oman and Qatar was framed not around grand geopolitical positioning but around two concrete deliverables: Albanian nationals in those countries would be protected, and Albania would co-sponsor the UN Security Council resolution condemning Iranian attacks against Gulf states. Albania did not hedge or issue a vague expression of concern. It signed on to a multilateral instrument at the Security Council level, placing itself unambiguously in the column that counts. A subsequent call with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar produced an even sharper commitment: Albania would formally designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. No timeline was given, but the statement’s directness made it a commitment of record.

What this sequence signals is a minister comfortable operating in the space where foreign policy meets hard security questions — and willing to make binding announcements without the softening that usually precedes them. The IRGC designation, when formalised, will have consequences: legal, diplomatic, and symbolic. Hoxha announced it in week one.

The European dimension of the agenda was no less active, but it operated in a different key. Albania’s accession process has reached a stage where the minister’s job in Brussels is no longer to persuade interlocutors of the country’s commitment — that argument has been made and, largely, accepted — but to manage the tempo and quality of a negotiation already in motion. Hoxha’s meetings with HR/VP Kaja Kallas and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos were framed accordingly: the Security and Defence Partnership entering its second year, the accession process advancing at a pace described as unprecedented, Albania’s alignment with the Common Foreign and Security Policy deepening. What distinguishes this from the standard ministerial visit to Brussels is the register. These were not lobbying calls. They were working sessions between parties who share a common timeline and are coordinating on its execution. The meeting with EU Ambassador Gonzato in Tirana — a Saturday morning bilateral on recent developments, described without ceremony — carried the same character: a working relationship that does not need to perform itself.

What is striking, taken together, is the deliberate absence of performative novelty. Hoxha did not arrive with a signature initiative or a repositioning doctrine. He arrived with an existing framework — Euro-Atlantic integration as the fixed axis, bilateral relationships as instruments within that axis — and proceeded to work it. The meetings with Bundestag member Peter Beyer and US Chargé d’Affaires Nancy VanHorn were reaffirmations of existing commitments, not attempts to reframe them. The meeting with the Spanish Ambassador, which previewed an upcoming Hoxha visit to Madrid, was the most forward-looking bilateral of the week — signalling that beyond tourism, Albania and Spain see space to develop cooperation in renewables, infrastructure, and agro-industry.

Two items on the agenda sit somewhat apart from the rest and deserve attention precisely because they are rarely foregrounded by foreign ministers in their first week. The meeting with Ardita Sinani, Mayor of Preshevë, placed the Presevo Valley Albanian community — economic, educational, cultural support — explicitly within the minister’s priority frame. The event at the Albanian Embassy in Brussels honouring teachers of Albanian-language schools in the diaspora was, in its quiet way, a statement about what the ministry considers worth the foreign minister’s time. Both gestures suggest a conception of the foreign service that includes its obligations to Albanians beyond the border, not merely its transactions with foreign governments.

The question that remains open after nine days is not whether Hoxha knows what he is doing — the week makes clear that he does — but whether the operational coherence he has demonstrated translates into the kind of strategic initiative that advances Albania’s most consequential files: accession, rule of law credibility, and the management of a regional security environment that is more volatile than at any point in the past decade. The IRGC pledge is the most consequential single announcement of the week. Whether it is followed through, and on what timeline, will be an early test of whether Hoxha’s directness is a governing style or an opening posture.

On the available evidence, he is a minister who acts before he announces, who treats hard commitments as preferable to careful ambiguity, and who understands that the foreign minister’s job begins with the citizens abroad, not with the press release at home. That is not a small thing.

Aurel Cara, an engineer by training, is devoted to writing on the policies and events that shape Albania’s EU trajectory.

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