Albania

Leaders of the six Western Balkan countries, including Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, met on Monday in Skopje, North Macedonia to discuss reforms needed to access the European Union growth plan presented last October.

SKOPJE - Two protocols that will enable the establishment of a free labour market in Open Balkan member states - Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania - were signed in Skopje on Monday.

First, a panel discussion of leaders will be held, in which Vui, Prime Minister of Montenegro Milojko Spaji, Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama, Prime Minister of the Interim Institutions in Pristina Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of North Macedonia Dimitar Kovaevski will take part.

Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni held consecutive meetings with the ambassadors of Switzerland and Albania on Friday.

During her meeting with Swiss Ambassador Stefan Estermann, they discussed the planning of joint actions between the two countries, and jointly promoting sustainability and innovation in tourism.

Athens is standing in the way of an EU-Tirana Defense and Security Agreement over the Albanian government's intransigent stance regarding the incarceration of the ethnic Greek mayor of Himare, Fredi Beleri.

The EU is in the process of speeding up the procedures for signing agreements with third countries outside the Union with a view to better defense cooperation.

Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mariya Gabriel, alongside 46 foreign ministers, have collectively denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) export of ballistic missiles to Russia.

Fredi Beleri, the ethnic-Greek elected mayor of Himare, western Albania, was granted a six-hour leave from prison to attend his grandmother's funeral on Sunday. 

According to state broadcaster ERT, the funeral was scheduled for Sunday at 2.30 p.m. in Himare. 

Substantial developments are anticipated in foreign policy and defense issues in 2024. Not least among them are the contacts between Greece and Turkey, which will be dominated by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara (or Istanbul) in April and on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington in July. 

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis has defended Greece's stance on the case of Fredi Beleri, the ethnic Greek mayor-elect in the southern Albanian town of Himare, who has been in pre-trial detention since May on vote-buying charges.

Fredi Beleri, the incarcerated ethnic Greek elected mayor of the Albanian region of Himare, penned a letter to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Sunday. This action followed the resignation of defeated mayor Gjergji Goro, who, having lost to Beleri in the elections, assumed mayoral duties amid his imprisonment.