Italy wants energy projects in exchange for visas

Tirana, 26 Oct. 2008. (AENews) Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gianfranco Frattini, conditioned visas liberation process with controversial Italian investments in electricity generations in Albania, according to local news agency Balkanweb.

Mr. Frattini is pursuing an official visit in Albania today and has promised faster EU and NATO integration, including the dream of every Albanian for visas liberalization, highlighting also “the development of energetic projects that Italy needs”. Italian energy giant ENEL has proposed a 1600 MW coal fired thermal power plant on the Albanian coast and an undersea interconnection line.

Under the Kioto protocol, Albania hase no obligation to reducie its CO2 emissions. Concerns over such a project were raised last weeks in Albania after newspapers discovered that a Bosnian-British businessman had managed to buy the land were the thermal power plant would be build. Mr. Damir Fazlic, declared in Tirana that he intends to sell the land brought cheap, possibly for Eur 50 million through a company registered in Cyprus. It is unclear if Mr. Frattini’s declaration is related or not to that of Mr.Fazlic.

Short URL: http://www.albanianeconomy.com/news/?p=368

Posted by admin on Oct 27 2008. Filed under Economy, General News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry