site.btaPM Borissov Talks with Albanian Counterpart Edi Rama

Sofia, September 28 (BTA) - Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has talked with his Albanian counterpart Edi Rama on the telephone, the government information service said on Thursday.

Borissov said Bulgaria insists that Tirana should guarantee the rights of the Bulgarian national minority in line with the international legal standards. The conversation was prompted by a bill aimed to protect the minorities' rights drafted by the Albanian government. Borissov said he expected the legislation to include provisions protecting the rights of the Bulgarian minority.

Rama assured the Bulgarian Prime Minister that the bill was still under preparation, and pledged that his country would not infringe on the interests of the Bulgarian minority. He stressed that communication with Bulgaria would continue so that the Bulgarians' interests in Albania would be protected.

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) quoted Angel Dzhambazki MEP (European Conservatives and Reformists Group/VMRO) as saying: "We will fight for the Bulgarian minority's rights in Albania." VMRO specified that the bill in question mentions an Egyptian minority but omits the Bulgarian national minority.

Dzhambazki argued that this version of the bill is unacceptable and un-European. He found that the provision in question had been debated only in the Legal Issues Committee, and would be debated by the other committees next Monday and Tuesday when representatives of the Bulgarian organizations will be given a hearing. In this way Bulgarians in Albania will be able to defend the mandatory inclusion of their national minority in the law, said Dzhambazki.

VMRO's press office recalled that Dzhambazki and Andrey Kovatchev MEP (EPP/GERB) managed to include a text in the European Parliament's annual resolution on Albania's progress which urged the government to recognize the Bulgarian national minority and protect its rights and lawful interests.

Andon Donchev MP of the Volya party read out a declaration in Parliament urging that the cause of Bulgarians in Albania become a real priority of the State and one of the top policies during Bulgaria's EU Council Presidency in the first half of 2018. He said that different sources put the number of people of Bulgarian origin in Albania in the range of 50,000 to 100,000.