EU urges reforms, political reconciliation

TIRANA, Feb. 7 – Stefano Sannino, Europe Commission’s Director-General for Enlargement, was on a visit to Albania where he told all the top officials he met that working with the electoral reform and other ones was fundamental for the country’s efforts of membership into the bloc.
Sannino has been the usual official coming from Brussels for more than a year. His boss Stefan Fuele has not made known any plan of a visiting.
Meanwhile Albania has applied for the candidate status since 2009 and is expecting a positive answer this year, after two failures in the previous years.
Sannino met with President Bamir Topi and Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli, Prime Minister Sali Berisha and Foreign Minister Edmond Haxhinasto, and also main opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama.
Sannino hailed the recent positive developments that have returned the political climate to normality and emphasized that the EU is following with interest the progress of the electoral reform, the Parliamentary reform, the approval of the laws that require three-fifths of the votes and the preparation of the Action Plan for the work on candidate status.
As expected he heard from Berisha and the other governing authorities the decision that European integration remains Albania’s top priority.
For the moment it seems that Albania’s political life is not sparking any violent problems but it has remained at daily confrontations about the economy. Not much is spoken about the electoral reform and people do not know much about the work of the parliamentary commission on that.
U.S. Ambassador Alexander Arvizu was also very active in the country’s political life this week.
He first met for coffee with Tirana Mayor Lulzim Basha, whom he has called as a ‘rising star’ in politics. Basha was just back from a visit to the United States and they discussed the possibilities of US investment in Tirana, according to the mayor.
The next day Arvizu went for a long talk with Edi Rama in his office to discuss all the issues of the daily agenda. He also said they were organizing a visit for Rama in Washington, apparently in another move to show that they are impartial and that also Albanian leaders get their place in Washington.