OSCE lauds Albania for progress, notes challenges ahead

TIRANA, Feb. 9 – Albania plays a constructive regional role, but it must continue on its reform path and focus on improving its election process to achieve its Euro-Atlantic integration goals, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, said Monday during a one-day visit to Tirana.
“Albania has made tangible progress over the past 18 years, but many challenges lie ahead. Judicial reforms and the election process must meet OSCE standards,” Bakoyannis said.
The Chairperson said she chose to travel to South-Eastern Europe early in the 2009 Greek OSCE Chairmanship to demonstrate that “the OSCE is in a unique position to help the region on its road to progress.”
“Our 2009 OSCE Chairmanship will benefit the Western Balkans as a whole, as well as Albania specifically,” she said. “For Greece, it would be a great success if by the year – the end of our Chairmanship – our neighborhood were a more prosperous and more stable European region.”
Bakoyannis met with President Bamir Topi, Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha, Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli, as well as the Chairs of political parties represented in Parliament.
In meetings with political parties in Tirana, Bakoyannis emphasized the need to further strengthen the protection of human rights, the rule of law and the fight against corruption. She welcomed the constructive political debate that has taken place in the country.
“The positive climate of political consensus on major reforms in Albania has bolstered political stability,” she said. “It is imperative to maintain this trend and continue to implement key reforms through consensus-building.”
To continue its progress toward Euro-Atlantic integration, Albania needs to advance its reforms in legislation and the judiciary, as well as in areas including property, elections and administration, and it must work on parliamentary capacity-building, anti-trafficking and anti-corruption, she said.
“In pursuit of these endeavors, Albania has the firm and active support of the OSCE Presence here; a Presence that is doing vital work in a number of key fields,” she said.
Bakoyannis also spoke about bilateral ties and Albania’s efforts to get integrated into NATO and the European Union.
The OSCE chairman-in-office said they would respond to Tirana’s request to send monitors for the upcoming June 28 parliamentary elections.
Bakoyannis said that following the ratification of Albania’s Stabilization and Association Agreement last month, next week the Greek parliament would ratify the NATO membership protocol giving the green light to Albania’s full membership into NATO.
The Greek foreign minister said that the ethnic Greek minority in the country and the Albanian immigrant community in her country were valuable bridges for both countries’ further extension of their bilateral ties.
On Albania’s possible membership to the EU in 2014 as her Albanian counterpart had stated, Bakoyannis said that was a very optimistic timing taking into consideration that the EU member countries had to first ratify the Lisbon treaty.
“But naturally every EU member country is of the opinion that the Western Balkans belongs to Europe,” she said.
When asked about properties of the Cam community in Greece (the community that was deported from Greece at the end of World War II and which ask for the return of their properties in that region), Bakoyannis said they had to refer all their claims to the Greek courts.
Referring to Kosova, Bakoyannis said it could not become an OSCE member as many countries in the organization had different opinions and everything at the OSCE was reached by consensus.
Greece has not recognized an independent Kosova.
Bakoyannis also said that her country would monitor Albania’s newly enacted “clean hands” lustration law targeting former officials of the communist regime, which critics say could be used for political revenge attacks by the government.
“We have expressed our concerns for this law, have discussed it with the Albanian government and will monitor its implementation,” said Bakoyannis.
The law has come under harsh criticism from the country’s association of prosecutors and judges as well as from Western capitals, while the United States embassy in Tirana asked the government to redraft it.