Marjana Koçeku chose Europe Day to prove that Ghegnish can also be used as a folkloric packaging for Edi Rama’s standard integration messages. The socialist MP, known as the “neo-mountaineer” of the Socialist Party, published a long status on Facebook where Europe is described as “Neo-Europe”, while Albania is presented as a nation in search of “re-Europeanization”, with a language that sometimes sounded like a political manifesto and sometimes like a competition for modern dialectology.
Essentially, the message remains the classic one of government propaganda: outside Europe there is darkness, isolation and “semi-states”, while inside it lies the moral, economic and historical salvation of Albanians. But the novelty this time was not the content. It was the packaging. Because instead of the standard Albanian of the Tirana administration, the usual message of integration was served in Gegnish, as if the European Union had suddenly turned into an assembly of Alpine towers.
Koçek talks about "Neo-Europe", about the "re-Europeanization" of the continent and about the need for Europe to "reinvent itself", while the reader is left between two dilemmas: are we dealing with a political status or with a draft manifesto for a literary festival in Valbona.
The irony is that Ghegnish, a dialect that was suppressed for decades by the ideological standardization of the communist regime, is today used by the government as an identity decoration to sell the most globalist message possible. A kind of patriotism with IPA funds. A modern folklore where the lute serves as the soundtrack for the European integration powerpoints.
In the end, the status of the MP does not bring any new ideas about Europe, but proves something else: in the Socialist Party, even dialects have now been introduced into the function of political marketing. And so, between “Albania”, “Neo-Europe” and “re-Europeanization”, the usual propaganda was simply given a re-Europeanized twist.
