EU says no Albanian official talking against visa liberalization

TIRANA, Dec 7 – The European Commission Delegation office in Tirana issued a statement Sunday denying there has been any statement or words from any Albanian politician against visa liberalization for the country.
A statement said that the Media recently reported about a dinner on 24 November held for Pierre Mirel, Director for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo Issues in the European Commission.
“For good order, the European Commission states that on 24 November a dinner was held in the Residence of the Head of the European Commission Delegation in Tirana in order to permit Mr Mirel to meet with politicians from the Democratic Party, the Socialist Party and from other parties. Mr Ditmir Bushati did not participate in the dinner,” it said, adding, “None of the participants said anything that could be interpreted as going counter to Albania’s interest in obtaining visa free travel at the earliest possible time or as going counter to its European integration objective.”
True that the EC office referred to the local media as the source of the statement. But in fact it was directed to Prime Minister Sali Berisha who had personally accused Bushati of talking ill to his cabinet’s efforts on visa liberalization.
Unlike FYROM, Montenegro and Serbia, Albania, together with Bosnia and Kosovo, should wait and fulfill more criteria on its road map requests before getting the green light from Brussels on visa liberalization. It is very likely that will be given in mid-2010 but until then it should strive to work more on the border management, biometric passports, fighting organized crime and corruption.
The issue of visa liberalization was a top one during the elections last summer. Both the government and the opposition pledged they would secure Albanians with that regime very soon.
But besides being a political issue, the visa liberalization seems more to be an issue for which Brussels and all its member countries have already decided to go ahead with.
The fact that Albania was not included in the first group means a lot, something which is clear to domestic politicians but not so much to the common people.
It would have been almost impossible for the country alone to have achieved such standards required from Brussels unless there was continuous assistance and also pressure from the European bloc.
Meanwhile Albania is also waiting to get the set of questions from Brussels, which means its request for EU candidate status is accepted. Following that, the tiny Balkan country has a long and hard road to pass before hoping to get the full membership, for which no date has yet been set.