Government urges speed up in issuing of new biometric passports

TIRANA, Oct 12 – The government is urging Albanians to rush to apply for new biometric passports as it is a key requirement for future visa-free travel to the European Union.
The new document is one of the principal conditions for the EU to include Albania in its list of countries whose citizens can travel without a visa to the Schengen bloc of states.
Last week, however, Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said it was unrealistic for Albania to expect visa liberalization on January 1, 2010 together with three other Balkan states – the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
Meanwhile the Albanian government insists that Albanians will have the visa-free regime within their first year of the second mandate.
They are likely referring to what Brussels said last summer. The EU decided to reconsider again next summer whether Albania and Bosnia had fulfilled the roadmap requirements for a visa-free regime.
The new biometric passports cost 50 euro, and are being produced by Aleat- a local joint-venture of the French company Sagem, with the American Enterprise Fund.
Since they were launched after the June 28 parliamentary election, 220,000 applications for new passports have been received by the company, and a further 208,000 have been distributed.
Interior Minister Lulzim Basha said last week that, “Ʒith this pace, in the first quarter of next year; Albania will have the largest number of biometric passports as a percentage of the population in the region.”
He called on the public to apply for the new passports, calling them “an investment for visa free travel into Europe.”