TIRANA, April 23 –
Following the handover of the questionnaire on the candidate status request, Prime Minister Sali Berisha was confident in Brussels that all European Union member countries would vote in favor of lifting the visa restriction on Albanians.
Albania could not join Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia last year to get that regime and was asked to work harder, particularly on its border controls.
Now Tirana authorities say that Albania has done all that the European Union had asked it to do to obtain visa-free access to the Schengen area.
Brussels will issue a report by the European Commission which would decide if Albania, along with Bosnia-Herzegovina, have actually fulfilled all the necessary conditions.
“I do believe we have met all requirements set by the European Commission,” the Albanian premier told the German Press Agency DPA.
Berisha said that the crime-busting and security apparatus set up in his country following Brussels’ indications is “absolutely comparable to those in place in European countries.”
Asked if that meant that the commission should give a positive verdict on the scrapping of visas, he replied: “I am hopeful, obviously.”
But even if the EU executive gave its green-light, lifting of visa requirements would still have to be approved by the EU’s interior ministers.
Last week the foreign ministers of France and Italy, Bernard Kouchner and Franco Frattini, urged them to do so.
“We hope that Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina would benefit soon from liberalization of short-stay visas for the Schengen area,” they wrote in a joint letter published by Le Monde in France and by La Repubblica in Italy.
Kouchner and Frattini said it was important that Bosnians and Albanians should not feel discriminated compared to Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians, who have enjoyed visa-free travel to the Schengen area since December.
“Freedom of movement in the EU is a fundamental tool to make the people of the Western Balkans feel like they fully belong to the European family,” the two ministers stressed.
The Schengen agreements are applied in all EU countries except Britain, Ireland, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania, plus in non-EU members Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
