These are momentous days for Albania. Two separate events – Kosovo’s declaration of independence and the likelihood of receiving an invitation to join the Nato alliance – offer one of Europe’s poorest countries an unprecedented chance of improving its long-term prospects.

For ethnic Albanians, who live in five countries in the western Balkans as a result of arbitrary drawing of national boundaries before and after the first world war, Kosovo’s re-birth on February 17 as a European state was cause for jubilation.