Emma Bonino meets Albanian PM Edi Rama

Foreign minister Emma Bonino said during a visit to Tirana that Italy was working to ensure that Albania receives its EU candidate status this autumn.

“We’re great supporters of your joining the European family,” Bonino said at a joint press conference with her Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati on Wednesday.

The Italian foreign minister stressed however that “the EU is not just an opportunity but also discipline”.

After meeting with Bushati, she also held talks with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and speaker of parliament Ilir Meta.

Italy is Albania’s leading commercial partner. Trade reached nearly two billion euro in 2012, and in the first quarter of 2013 amounted to 972 million euro, a year-on-year increase of 5.94 per cent.

Over the last decade, Italy’s Directorate General for Development Cooperation has allocated over 300 million euro in aid to Albania.

Economic ties between the two countries will be strengthened further by the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, TAP, which will carry gas from energy-rich Azerbaijan to Europe, and crosses Albanian territory.

The TAP project, which is supported by the EU as a way of boosting European energy security, envisages a pipeline of about 800 kilometres with an initial capacity of ten billion cubic metres of natural gas per year and the potential to reach 20 billion cubic metres. balkaninsight