Albanian parliament

The Albanian parliament failed to elect a new president on Wednesday after Prime Minister Edi Rama's governing Socialists decided not to offer a candidate in the first round of voting.

A diplomatic incident between the USA and Albania took place, a few days ago, leaving many wondering what form the relations of the two countries will take in the foreseeable future.
The incident took place between the Albania’s General Prosecutor and the US Ambassador to Tirana last week.

The Authority for Information on Former Communist Police Secret Files, which was established at the beginning of January, has started to receive the first requests from Albanian institutions looking to verify the pasts of people seeking promotion to senior positions or receiving medals from the state.

Albanian Parliament Speaker Ilir Meta told Kathimerini in an interview that "there is nothing the two countries can't discuss" and called for a comprehensive solution to bilateral differences, including the Cham issue, which Greece doesn't recognize.

The Albanian parliament will vote in December on whether to adopt a new law excluding people with criminal convictions from holding public office.

The proposed law, referred to as the 'decriminalisation law', will permanently ban people who have been convicted of serious offences, including murder, rape and genocide, from appointment or election to state institutions.

With Grexit now slowly receding in the rear view mirror, Greece’s radical leftist government is returning to more normal international contacts, as Greek FM Nikos Kotzias begins a tour of Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina this week.

On Tuesday, Kotzias will head to Pristina, where he will be received by Kosovo PM Isa Mustafa and his counterpart  Hashim Thaci.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic met with Albanian Parliament Speaker Ilir Meta in Tirana Wednesday to discuss relations between the two countries.

They also spoke about "ways to improve economic cooperation, including establishing direct flights between Belgrade and Tirana," Tanjug reported.

Greece will join the United States and other NATO members in efforts to defeat militants of Islamic State (ISIS), an issue which is expected to be discussed in the summit of the transatlantic alliance in Brussels next month, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said on Friday.

“Albanians of .. Cameria” was the latest irredentist “pipedream” heard in the increasingly tense western Balkans this week, uttered by none other than an Albanian lawmaker who assumed a vice-speaker’s position in that country’s Parliament.

The phrase belongs to one Shpëtim Idrizi, listed as the president of the small nationalist Party for Justice, Integration and Unity.

Ben Blushi, an Albanian lawmaker of the ruling Socialist Party (PS), has slammed Recep Tayyip Erdo?an?s call for the country to target followers of Fethullah Gülen, which the Turkish president made during his recent visit to the Balkan country.