Tirana Times
TIRANA, Oct. 26 – The Albanian government has launched an intensive public awareness campaign trying to educate its citizens about visa-free travel as an EU decision on whether to admit Albania to the Schengen zone draws closer. The European Union Council’s Interior Ministers have scheduled the date for the decision in Nov. 8. Ministers and politicians, members of parliament and more hold daily meetings all around the country to tell citizens about the deal which will allow Albanians to visit the Schengen countries for a period of up to three months as tourists, but not to settle or work there. People caught abusing the system will be sent back in a measure facilitated by re-admission agreements.
The campaign is among the conditions set by the EU before it takes the definitive decision on whether to admit Albania to the Schengen zone.
The Union wants to avoid an unwelcome repeat of the situation in which thousands of Serbian and Macedonian citizens granted visa-free travel less than a year ago have sought asylum in EU member states. Michele Cercone, spokesman for EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, said that agencies in some Western Balkan countries were misleading citizens and promising them that they could get asylum, jobs or financial assistance in the west of Europe. The EU considers this a misuse of asylum policy because the overwhelming majority of those leaving their home country do so for economic rather than political reasons.
In 2009, the European Union gave Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro visa-free entry rights and will soon add Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania to the list. The Albanian government is hopeful that, once citizens have received the necessary information about the new liberalized traveling rules for Schengen zone countries, there will be no major asylum problem. It is estimated that more than one million Albanians have left their country over the last twenty years headed for the European Union. Media reports daily efforts and also broadcast advertisement. In early this month the European Parliament had approved lifting visa requirements for both countries. The visas would be lifted by end of the year.
Several countries including France and Germany reportedly have requested additional security guarantees in order to back visa-free regimes for BiH and Albania.
Meanwhile local authorities in the tiny Balkan country have been flooded from the requests for the new biometric passports which are obligatory to enjoy the visa-free regime. Authorities say they have already issued more than one million passports. At the same time there is still no government decision what to do with another more than one million old passports still owned from the population. The government has decided before they will become obsolete at the end of the year. The Schengen border-free zone encompasses all EU states except Britain, Ireland, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
