Albania

Members of the European Parliament meeting in Brussels with their Albanian counterparts did not succeed in attempts to help find a compromise between representatives of the Albanian ruling and opposition parties. The two sides notably failed to produce a final declaration, which is generally issued at such meetings.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov, who has underlined the Western Balkans’ place in his country’s foreign policy priorities, has started a tour of the region that from May 5 to 14 2010 will take him to Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. Mladenov, Foreign Minister in the …

Kosovo Albanian government’s foreign minister, Skender Hyseni, called on EU to avoid making the “essential mistake” of postponing Kosovo’s integration. He said that he believed that the European Union “will make an essential mistake if it postpones Kosovo’s integration process too much” adding that the process should be sped up.

The NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, will travel to Tirana on 29 April 2010. He will meet with Albania’s President Bamir Topi, with Prime Minister Sali Berisha, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Ilir Meta and with Minister of Defense Arben Imami. The Secretary General will also meet with the …

Albanian officials have approved Vele Trpevski as the new Macedonian ambassador to Albania, the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed. Trpevski’s nomination was met with controversy due to his young age and apparent inexperience in diplomatic work.

The EU wants Albania to resolve its political stalemate by May 10th, for the good of the country’s integration processes. The ruling Democratic Party and the opposition Socialist Party have been at odds for months over the June 2009 general elections. The EU needs facts not promises, Spain’s Ambassador to …

The European Union on Tuesday proposed Georgia be included in its visa facilitation and readmission mechanism, increasing the number of such beneficiary countries to nine. The proposal was made by the European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation bloc.

Brussels will lift travel visa requirements for Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in October, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Monday (April 26th), after EU foreign ministers met with EC Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele in Luxembourg.

The European Commission (EC) says Albania has completed just one of four sections of its EU visa liberalisation questionnaire, local media reported on Sunday (April 25th). Government and local integration officials had assured the public that Tirana has met all technical criteria in the process. The section praised by Brussels …

The UN war crimes tribunal announced on Friday (April 16th) it will rule on an appeal by former Macedonian security official Johan Tarculovski on May 19th. He was given a 12-year sentence for a police attack on the Albanian-populated village of Ljuboten, near Skopje, during the 2001 conflict between Macedonia’s …