The Orthodox Church Property in Albania has caused new tensions between the Greek Foreign Ministry and the Albanian one.

In an interpellation called by the lawmaker of New Democracy, Theodoros Karaoglou, about the property of Greek minority in Albania, Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias underlined that Greece remains interested in Orthodox Church property.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has regularly monitored developments which are linked with the process of property return, in those cases when expropriation was done by the Hoxha regime in Albania. Certainly, it is understandable that our interest is focused especially in our diaspora and the property rights of the Orthodox Church in Albania,” Minister Kotizias said.

But the Foreign Ministry of Albania criticized the stance of Greece in regards to the Albanian Orthodox Church.

“Each time that the Greek state keeps such stances about the Albanian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox believers in the Albanian territory, it is interfering in the interior affairs of Albania,” the spokesperson of the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Glevin Dervishi said.

Further on, Dervishi underlined that the outstanding property juridical issues of the Orthodox Church are being treated continuously and will be examined based on the law and the international commitments of Albania.

“The issue of return of property in Albania is a process which affects Albanian citizens without any distinction of ethnicity, religion, or nationality,” Dervishi added.

The Human Rights Unity Party and OMONIA issued a statement by calling the “Urban Requalification of Himara” as a process which will damage and uproot the Greek community of Himara and cause its demographic change.