Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Honcharuk held a meeting with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Albania’s Prime Minister and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Edi Rama. During the meeting, the sides tackled the work of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, as well as bilateral relations between Ukraine and the Republic of Albania, in particular, the following issues.

First of all, the Prime Minister of Ukraine expressed his sincere condolences to the Albanian side over the deaths of their citizens caused by the recent earthquake in Albania.

The Head of the Ukrainian Government thanked Mr. Edi Rama for the visit and discussed the work of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The PM placed a special emphasis on the work of the OSCE structures not only in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but also in the temporarily occupied Crimea, and added: "The OSCE mission must effectively counter the malicious violation of human rights by Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine."

The Prime Minister of Ukraine emphasized: "It is essential for OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to ensure 24/7 monitoring of the security situation. This requires increased funding. We count that, during its Presidency Albania will pay attention to the promotion of this idea among other member states and initiate appropriate negotiations."

After this, the parties touched upon bilateral relations. Oleksiy Honcharuk said: "Our goal is to strengthen the bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and Albania. We praise the Albanian side's consent to open a Ukrainian Embassy on its territory and we are ready to approve the request we received last month from Albania. We look forward to opening embassies in the coming months."

On the outcomes of the meeting the parties also discussed conclusion of a Free Trade Area Agreement between Ukraine and Albania. The Prime Minister of Albania expressed the readiness of the State to enter into the relevant agreement.