Albania–Greece border

Northern Epirus

Albania was under Ottoman rule until 1913. After the First Balkan War the Great Powers took on the task of fixing the new state’s borders against the rival claims of Greece, Serbia and Montenegro; a frontier commission finished its work on the southern line in December 1913, and a protocol signed in Florence in 1925 settled the last details. The border runs from Lake Prespa along mountain crests to the Corfu Strait. Friction has persisted over southern Albania, which Greece calls Northern Epirus, where a Greek minority lives, as do some Albanians in Greece.^[1]

Death zone and exodus

Under communism Albania made its borders among the most dangerous in the Balkans. A border belt barred outsiders, an electric signalling fence called the klon stood hundreds of metres before the frontier, and the space beyond it was a death zone; illegal crossing was treason, punishable by ten years’ jail up to death.^[3]

After the regime collapsed in 1991, roughly 650,000 Albanians moved to Greece, many walking for hours over the mountains. By 2010 the fence was long gone and thousands still crossed each year near the border village of Konispol, a six-hour walk from Igoumenitsa.^[2]

“It takes up to six hours on foot to arrive near Igumenitsa”^[2]