Dear compatriots,

Dear Enver,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! I am happy to see an extraordinary interest in this conversation.During these three years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focused on the three following main objectives, through a dedicated team to its relations with the 1,5 million of Albanians living abroad:

• Identification and mapping of the Albanian Communities Abroad.
• Preservation of the cultural and linguistic identity of the Albanian Communities Abroad.
• Involvement of the Albanian people abroad in promoting the image of Albania.

 

Our vision is no longer an emotional or folk vision of a traditional and distant diaspora, but a clear and comprehensive one. That is why, I prefer speaking about “Albanians in the world”, and not just “diaspora”.

We are aware that the Albanian communities in the world have a variety of needs. Some need Consular services, others need support for their education, while many others have lost faith in their state being able to provide them with any quality services.

It is precisely such variety of our communities, which imposes a new vision on us, and new goals, aiming at making “Albanians in the World” become an integral part of  Albania’s soft power.

We have first focused on countries, where we have the largest presence of Albanians (like Italy and Greece), and where there is a larger need for state support.

The most urgent needs are certainly related with increasing the quality and range of Co0nsular services in line with the best European practices.  And we are not alone in these efforts. I said it yesterday, too: there is a lot Albania can learn from Kosovo, and its rich experience with its Diaspora.

Therefore, we have initiated a joint plan with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo to increase the effectiveness of our diplomatic and consular representation.

Albania and Kosovo have joint consular offices in Milan, Bari, and even in Munich recently. Such trend will continue in other countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific as well.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In these 3 years, we have fundamentally reformed our consular services, starting from their digitalization.

There is a total of 36 digital services:

• 23 services that citizens can receive at home by mail.
• For 13 other services, citizens must present themselves at the Embassy/Consulate only once.

 

Our Digital Consulate Project will be fully functional by the beginning of 2017, but starting from today, the Albanian citizens will apply online for receiving the 6 first Consular services.

We have, at the same time, reformed our entire tariffs of Consular services for the first time since the distant 1998, reducing some tariffs for some basic services, and increasing the number of services offered to our citizens.

Our intensive work has already given its first results, leading to less corruption and more transparency, better services, and monitoring of the internal activity of our administration.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered services to approximately 100 thousand citizens in 2014 only. In 2015, we managed to serve 200 thousand citizens, i.e. twice more services, but with the same number of staff, without creating any additional burden for the Albanian taxpayers.

Our Consulate of Thessaloniki with three Consuls and our Consulate of Milan, also with three Consuls, managed to offer 22 thousand passports in 1 year, which is several times more than the largest civil status unit in Albania, unit no.5 of Tirana, which has 3 times more employees (15).

In addition, as an example of our commitment to improve the real-time information of our citizens, wherever they are, we launched recently the “E-Consulate” application, which is already serving as a direct tool of communication with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Our digital Consulate of digital services is an extraordinary enterprise, which will turn out to be successful with your help.

We are aware that we are still far from what our citizens of the 21^st century expect from us. Difficulties, however, do not discourage us at all. We just want our citizens to feel secure, well-represented, and respected when they leave our embassies or consulates.

Thank you!