TIRANA (Reuters) – Albania will apply soon, probably at the end of April, to join the European Union, even though Brussels has told Tirana to first hold free and fair elections in June, the foreign minister said yesterday.

“Very soon Prime Minister Sali Berisha will apply for candidate status to the European Union,” Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha told an election meeting in the cental Albanian town of Elbasan, according to KLAN television.

A government official told Reuters the last days of April had been mentioned as the possible time of an application, but no date had yet been fixed. Such a move would happen during a heated political campaign for the June 28 elections.

Albanians, once Europe’s most isolated people under Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, would welcome the prospect of visa-free travel to the EU, and Basha promised existing visa requirements would be lifted in 12 months. Some Albanians still cross illegally into Greece in search of work.

The application would follow the induction of Albania and fellow Balkan and Adriatic Sea state Croatia into NATO on April 4 at the alliance’s 60th anniversary summit.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has told Albania it should first make sure the quality of its parliamentary elections is above reproach before it takes the next step on its long road to EU membership. Albania has yet to hold an election that meets international standards.

Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency, had initially welcomed an application, but said later it was not the right time because the EU was dealing with many problems of its own brought on by the financial and economic crisis.

Berisha has been adamant Albania would go on with its application.

Neighboring Montenegro applied for EU membership in December and elsewhere in the region Serbia and Bosnia have said they will apply this year.