Government sets visa liberalization reforms as priority

TIRANA, Oct 27 – The Albanian government said that it is prioritizing all integration-related issues and visa liberalization, the fight against corruption, organized crime and the major problems of the country along with its efforts to ensure the country gets the visa-free regime from the European Union by mid-year in 2010.
Tirana is trying to fulfill all the requirements of the road map set by the EU for visa liberalization.
Among all specific requests that have to do with border crossing, their integrated control is will be finalized by November.
In this week’s meeting with the governing Democratic Party lawmakers, Prime Minister Sali Berisha made a review of all the measures that the government has taken to meet the required standards for the progress of the visa liberalization process.
He mentioned that they had promised during the electoral campaign that within the first year of the second mandate they would do the utmost and meet all the conditions and implement the reforms so that a decision on lifting the visas for the Albanians was taken.
“This decision is extremely important for every country, but it is perhaps among the most important for the Albanians because almost 25 percent of them are in emigration and have thousands of family reunion problems, they have an education and employment question as well. Thus, this decision creates a completely new situation for the Albanian citizens.”
“The government has made the greatest efforts to meet all the requirements in record time and to deserve this decision,” said Berisha.
Albania was not included together with the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia to have the visa-free regime starting Jan. 1, 2010. But it was also approved by the European parliament as a country that will enjoy that regime the moment it fulfills its requirements.
The government is pledging to soon achieve that and is also urging common Albanians to apply for the new biometric passports.
There are 231,725 applications for biometric passports and some 180,000 have already been received.
“I reiterate my call to all the Albanian citizens to apply so that to get the new biometric passports which are of the highest quality.”