Half a million new bio passports

TIRANA, Feb. 22 – The government reported that more than half a million Albanians had already applied for the new biometric passport, a key condition along the country’s request for a visa-free regime.
The Interior Ministry and Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that up to last week there were 501,000 applications for the new passports, a figure which pleased them very much as they are trying to persuade Brussels to give the go-ahead for the visa regime.
Authorities also urged the population to go and apply for the new passports, which will be the only ones to be used if the new visa-free regime enters into force later.
Albania started to issue new passports last May.
Together with Bosnia, and Kosovo, Albania was not included in last year’s list of three regional countries – FYROM, Montenegro and Serbia – which got the visa-free regime for the European Union Schengen member countries and came into force last December.
Albania expects to get approval this summer.