Italian FM, candidate to replace Ashton, to visit Tirana

TIRANA, July 24 – Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini will visit Albania on Friday in one of the stops in a lengthy tour of official visits in the Balkans, the Italian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Italian foreign minister is expected to meet all of Albania’s top leaders. Mogherini will also visit Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia during her tour.
Italy currently holds the six-month presidency of the EU, and European integration will also be discussed, in addition to bilateral relations.
Italy is very important to Albania’s economy and it’s EU future, Albanian officials say.
Italy has been an advocate in Albania’s favor at the EU, stressing the need to integrate the parts of the Balkans not yet in the EU as soon as possible in light of developments in Ukraine and the fear that Russia would start to exert more pressure in the region.
The country hosts about half a million Albanian citizens who live and work there. Albanians are the second largest non-EU group in Italy with around half a million migrants, according the Italian Institute of Statistics. INSTAT data show some 66 percent of the Albanian community in Italy or 328,502 have obtained permanent stay permits.
Italy is also Albania’s top trade partner with 50 percent of total exports and 30 percent of imports. More than 80 percent of footwear and garment products manufactured in Albania, which are the country’s main exports, go to Italy.
Mogherini’s visit comes at a time she is being proposed to be the next EU High Representative after the term of Catherine Ashton ends in November.
“We do believe that Federica Mogherini has all the qualities to be a very good High Representative. I personally never understood the criticism on her supposed lack of experience,” Italian minister for European affairs, Sandro Gozi, told a press conference after a meeting of the EU’s General Affairs Council in Brussels. “She is somebody who has been following and working in foreign policy for 20 years. These are all good points that push us to confirm her candidacy. We have never hesitated on this even in the last days.”
Very little was known about Mogherini before she became Italy’s foreign minister in February. She is part of Italy’s “generational change” electoral revolition, and at 41, she is just two years older than Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
A graduate of Rome’s Sapienza University, she was elected to parliament in 2008 and also represented Italy at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described Mogherini as “typical of center-left politicians of her generation” who “like many of her peers, she has journeyed from the radical left to the mainstream.”
Analysts say Renzi took quite a risk appointing Mogherini over the well-experienced Emma Bonino, who was also well-respected at home and abroad. Renzi stood firm in his mission to “create a young, fresh and vibrant government,” as The Local edition of Italy reports.