Top officials from Italy's foreign ministry met Albania's diaspora minister Pandeli Majko in Rome and shared with him Italy's long experience of emigration, the ministry said on Wednesday.
The director general for Italians abroad and migration policy, Luigi Vignali, and senior officials from the ministry's directorate for cooperation and European integration attended Tuesday's meeting with Majko, the ministry said.
During the meeting, all aspects of Albanian emigration to Italy were discussed in Italy and appreciation expressed for the high level of integration achieved, the ministry stated, calling this "a highly positive model".
The foreign ministry officials assured Majko of Italy's readiness to share their country's expertise to help Albania create a register of citizens living abroad, by sending technical teams to give advice, the ministry stated.
For his part, Majko promised to tackle the problem of unaccompanied Albanian minors arriving in Italy.
After Moroccans, Albanians are the biggest group of non-European Union residents in Italy. A total 441,838 Albanian citizens were resident in Italy on 1 January last year, compared with 454,817 Moroccans, according to the latest data from Italy's statistics agency Istat.
Between 1990 and 2015, a quarter of the population left Albania, one of Europe's poorest countries, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Over 4.6 million Italians were registered as living abroad in 2016. Some 14 million people emigrated from Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries.
