GUIDE of Albania's FTA with other countries

Introduction

Free Trade Agreements (FTA) are a product of an increasing intensification of international trade in goods and services. They are merely agreements (both bilateral and multilateral), which govern such international trade.

The benefits of trading across the border are as follows:

•  Advancing of prosperity,

•  Encouragement of peaceful relations between nations.

On of the most significant examples of liberalised trade among countries is today's EU. Liberalisation of trade and the unification of national markets into a single one is the answer that western European nations gave to their painful warring history with each other during the last centuries. Because of the adoption of such liberalising and integrating policies implemented, today, the EU is a leader of the world economy.

The increasing of trade flows among countries identified the need to govern such a trade through a regulatory supranational body. The first initiative of this kind took place immediately after WWII. In 1948, there was adopted the General Agreement On Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which should govern the international trade of goods. The main objective of GATT was encouraging nations to carry out open and liberal trade policies. Since 1948, the world trade system has dramatically evolved because of substantial changes in the world's economic, technological and social environment. This made possible, that in 1995 GATT came to an end and its place has been since taken from the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Albania is a member of WTO since 2001.

Albanians, because of historical records, are very clear on adopting extremely conservative policies of trade (“self reliance” was the motto of the former communist regime): that implies massive poverty. Opening up of national borders an liberalisation of trade, during the last decade, made possible for Albania to leave behind the painful memories of goods' shortages and long queues when buying them. Being a member of WTO is a serious commitment towards liberal trade policies in an increasingly global environment.

The Albanian government, in the framework of the Stability Pact's Memorandum of Agreement on Trade Facilitation and Liberalisation (signed from Trade Ministers of South East European Countries in Brussels, June 2001), vowed to commit itself to implementing liberal trade policies. It has been one of the Stability Pact's requirements that Balkans should be soon transformed into a free trade zone. FTA that Albania has signed with other neighbouring countries have been inspired from the belief that such a policy is the only way of having a sustainable economic growth and prosperity. The long-term objective of all Albanians is joining the EU, where there is a single unified market of goods and services.