TIRANA, June 25/ATA/-Albania’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ditmir Bushati attended the meeting of “Friends of Albania” at the Foreign Affairs Council of the EU, an initiative of Foreign Minister of Greece, Nikos Kotzias.
The meeting was attended by Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Malta, Cyprus and other EU member states as well as the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.
FM Bushati thanked the member countries for their continued and unreserved support to Albania’s European perspective and considered this meeting a very good opportunity to discuss the progress made by Albania. Minister Bushati underlined the steps Albania has taken by going through bold reforms in order to build the rule of law and meet the five priorities for the EU accession perspective.
On her part, Mogherini praised Albania’s constructive role in the region and added that opening of accession talks with Albania and Macedonia is a fair decision of mutual interest.
The coordination of the next steps to start accession talks were discussed in the meeting.
In this context, the foreign ministers of member countries praised Albania’s constructive role in the region and the positive results achieved in meeting key priorities for opening of accession negotiations and approving justice reform, while emphasizing the importance of their sustainable implementation.
They also highlighted the Commission’s Report emphasizing Albania’s progress with state-consolidation reforms and determination of the Albanian government to pursue implementation of justice reform./j.prifti/p.s./
