TIRANA, Dec. 21 – Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said this week Athens is looking to find legal avenues to revoke a state of war law that has hampered Albania-Greece relations since the end of WWII.
Speaking at a media panel on national Greek TV, Kotzias suggested two possible legal solutions to the long-existing problem: either through a presidential decree or through a decree approved by the Greek parliament.
The anachronistic law passed by Greece has been in force since 1940 as the Greek parliament never abolished it. Meanwhile, both countries are NATO members and a Friendship Agreement was passed in 1996.
Kotzias said that the legal procedures that can abolish this law must be thought of separately. According to him, the decree through which Greece announced war to Albania during the Italian-Greek war was a royal decree. In present terms, a royal decree translates as a presidential decree.
“There is a second interpretation which, in my opinion, is not that rigorous. This interpretation says that the royal decree was issued as a time there was no Parliament, and for this reason a parliamentary decree could not exist; now the Parliament can formulate the decree,” the Greek foreign minister said.
However, he added the parliament does not correspond to a royal decree, but a presidential one.
Albanian Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ditmir Bushati agreed with Kotzias’ viewpoint that the law of war is the equivalent of a presidential decree. Like Kotzias, Bushati is also optimistic about the positive results solving this issue will have.
“I am a partisan of small but consistent stepped politics. I strongly believe that depowering the law of war will offer good effects not only in the political and psychological context of our countries’ relations but also in the legal sense of property rights,” Bushati said in an interview on Albanian TV.
The law has frozen rights for thousands of Albanians citizens who have property in Greece. These are primarily descendents of Cham deportees — ethnic Albanians expelled from Greece at the end of WWII.
Kotzias commented that the Albania-Greece relations should keep on being positive and so he characterized Albania’s recent decision to finance the search mission and reburying of Gre
