Toponyms on passports

After the marathon discussions that lasted more than two months, the Greek government has finally decided to temporarily allow the Albanian children born in Greece to enter their country, although their Greek birthplace is written in Albanian on their passports.

The news was published by the Greek Ministry of Defense and was confirmed by our embassy in Athens.

According to the information that was made public, the movement of children will be allowed for Easter and will end on May 12th. After this deadline the old rule will still be on, until this problem will be resolved.

Greece has banned Albanian children born in Greece from entering crossing the border, saying that their biometric passports have names of Greek towns written in Albanian.

A work group was established for resolving this issue, but there has been no tangible result yet. The Greek side insists that the names of the Greek towns should be corrected and written in English, according to the international conventions.