Tomorrow, Nov. 28, is the National Day of Albania. It borders Greece to the south, Montenegro to the north, Serbia to the northeast, and the Republic of Macedonia to the east. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west and a coast on the Ionian Sea to the southwest.

Albania lies along the northwestern edge of the Balkan Peninsula. Separated from Italy by only 76 kilometers of the Adriatic Sea, Albania, throughout its history, has been occupied by Italian powers expanding eastward into the Balkans or by Balkan powers expanding westward.

In the 1500s, Albania came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire (centered in what is now Turkey), and did not gain its independence until 1912. From 1944 to 1990, Albania was a Communist state, and in 1991, it began its transition to a democratic state and market economy.

Albania is a mountainous country in which about 70 percent of the land lies above 300 meters (1,000 feet). Its mountains, which form a broad backbone from northwest to east, rise abruptly from the coastal lowlands to elevations of more than 2,400 meters.

In the two decades after World War II, Albania traded almost exclusively with other Communist states, mostly in Eastern Europe in the late 1960s, Albania renewed some economic ties with Western Europe, and after all the fall of Communism, the country conducted most of its trade with the European Union (EU). Italy is Albania’s most important trading partner, accounting for half of exports and 40 percent of imports. Current trade partners include the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Albania is a member of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, and the Union for the Mediterranean. Albania has been a potential candidate for accession to the European Union since January 2003, and it formally applied for EU membership on April 28, 2009.

Albania is a parliamentary democracy and a transition economy. Tirana, its capital, is home to approximately 895,000 of the country’s 3.6 million people. It is also the financial capital of the country. Free-market reforms have opened the country to foreign investment, especially in the development of energy and transportation infrastructure.

We congratulate the people and government of the Republic of Albania led by Their Excellencies, President Bamir Topi and Prime Minister Sali Barisha, and its Consulate in the Philippines, headed by Consul Ceferino L. Benedicto, on the occasion of their National Day.