Tirana is on fire - literally. On Friday evening, in front of the Albanian parliament, police clashed with demonstrators from the opposition Democratic Party, who are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama. The split is no longer just political - Molotov cocktails, flares and torches flew at the gendarmerie lines, while water cannon and tear gas opened the crowd up.

The trigger is summed up in one line by one of the demonstrators: "This government has integrated crime into power. Look how many mayors, ministers and MPs have been indicted." A question that in Albania is no longer rhetorical - it's a statistic.

The crisis escalated in December when the prosecutor's office indicted Belinda Balluku, a close adviser to Rama, for tender fraud. Parliament blocked the lifting of her immunity, and that cemented the public impression that the political class protects its own. Rather than fall before justice, those with immunity hide behind the institutions they control.

For the Balkan viewer, this is a film we've already seen. Skopje 2016, Belgrade 2024, Sarajevo 2018 - different countries, same structure. A corrupt elite shielded by parliamentary arithmetic, an opposition forced into the streets, police standing in the middle. The question citizens are asking in every language is the same: "If we're the ones paying tax, then who answers for us when nobody thinks about us?"

Albania is supposed to be in the EU by 2030. This is the test: will Brussels be satisfied with formal box-ticking, or will it force them to find a way to deal with the hidden networks of power. The question in Tirana is being asked now, in the street, with burning bottles. The question in Skopje and Belgrade is being asked more quietly - but it's the same one.