By Adela Halo – TIRANA, Oct. 12 – It is no novelty. There are three main features in our relationship with Europe. We have always wanted it, apparently. Albanians are anyway European by vocation, apparently. And what actually begs least debate is that in every pinnacle of our relations with Europe, we have almost managed to join it – almost crossed from East to West several times in our history. This happened this week as well – we almost became an EU candidate country.
Even the conditional recommendation of the European Commission for Albania to be granted the candidate status was no news. It was heralded by the very political failures that we have all followed. Moreover, beyond media coverage, the lack of achievements that led towards failure to receive candidate status (as a conditional status, is effectively a failure to receive status), were identified by civil society in various ways. Alongside analysts that have spoken in the media, our half-progress was also identified by a thorough monitoring effort of a group of 15 experts led by the Open Society Foundation Albania/Soros. During June – September 2012, the Foundation tracked the implementation of measures foreseen by the Government and other public institutions addressing the so called “12 Priorities”- which are nothing more than a concrete list of our democracy’s lame limbs – the problematic functioning of the Parliament, the political control over the judiciary and public administration, corruption, organized crime, human rights, injustice in the property sector etc. In other words we produced our own progress report – an Albanian progress report. In the roundtable organized on October 8th, where we presented the Civic Monitoring Report of the Action Plan addressing the 12 EC Priorities, we were told that the Progress Report of the European Commission is the “real” report for Albania. By way of logical deduction – we were told that our report had no value. All of this came before it was even presented – before the presentation of main findings, of recommendations and so on. In fact, many things were said, but let’s start with this remark, as it is a question of legitimacy. If we do not agree on this, there is no reason to read this article to the end.
During the monitoring process, we have been asked frequently why we were monitoring – the Ministry of Integration monitors, the European Commission monitors, why is another monitoring necessary? An inflation of monitoring, no added value. The reason is simple. The Ministry of Integration monitors and reports to Brussels – and understandably, like any ministry/government all around the world, it is interested in reporting successes, in reporting what’s good. The European Commission is the European Commission – the engine of the EU enlargement process, interested in consolidating its image as objective, truthful, fair, but also transformative. The Commission needs to, in general, continuously prove that its policies transform the political behaviour and self-governance of a country – because that is how the process of integration should be: transformative, fast and efficient. And in fact sometimes it seems Brussels is more eager to see Albania progress than Albania’s political class is. The Commission also needs to be pragmatic, not exaggerate with demands and to reward progressively in order to maintain its transformative power. Such interests – of pragmatism versus objectivity – have several times led to choices of debatable meritocracy. The Commission also has limited resources to analyze, understand, and then verify the information coming from Albanian authorities.
But beyond all this, which after all is all debatable – there are counterarguments from all sides – there is only one essential, indisputable element that makes the Commission’s monitoring insufficient. The European Commission does not vote in Albania. The European Commission is not governed in Albania. We vote and we are governed – we, the 15 monitoring experts who drafted the Albanian monitoring progress report, along with all other Albanian citizens. A local assessment can never be less “real” than that of the European Commission. We monitor and will continue to monitor because our state should first be accountable to us, and then to Brussels, no matter how good of a friend Brussels is.
Beyond the legitimacy argument, and using exactly the steadfast, uncontested confidence that the Progress Report is the “real” report for Albania, we see that the “realness” of the monitoring of local experts is, in fact, largely confirmed by the very Progress Report. Thus, both reports mention the pending appointment of the 9th judge in the Constitutional Court; both talk about the unchanged institutional position of the Department of Public Administration; both raise concerns over the failure to implement decisions of the Civil Service Commission; both require greater financial and human resources for the Ombudsman; both emphasize that the appointment of judges remains politicized; both highlight that the state remains a weak enforcer of court decisions (and on this the Progress Report is more direct); both underline the lack of reporting on the implementation of the 3-year Action Plan on Anti-Corruption, etc.
There are also differences, of course there are differences. And it is our duty to see that these differences are identified and addressed, as they go right to the heart of the functioning of democracy in Albania – right to the heart of the relationship between citizens and public authority. For example, the European Commission notes the consensus achieved between the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party on a number of draft amendments to the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure, in the framework of the Working Group established for this purpose following the 2011 November agreement.
However, it does not highlight the fact that to date, the work of the working group is known only through the media. It is not documented in any parliamentary official document. To date, there are no working group minutes of meetings, statements or official reports on its activities and draft amendments. The Albanian public has only been offered media statements by MPs in this working group, where gossip and political manoeuvring is hard to distinguish from fact. To date, no evidence is provided to prove the achievement of consensus on any amendments or the nature of such amendments. In addition, the European Commission does not identify the failure to include small parliamentary parties in this Working Group, although consensus on the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure is not equivalent and cannot be limited to consensus between the two major parties. Two important indicators of democracy in the Assembly – transparency and pluralism – remain absent. This is only one example. The comparative reading of the two reports – that of European Commission and that of a civil society group – will make other such differences apparent to the public.
Nevertheless, despite differences of emphasis on democratic standards of various reform processes, both reports share the same requests for the future. Specifically, the Civic Monitoring Report, published on October 8th, among other things, recommends:
“In order to instil confidence that Albania is on a solid path towards the opening of accession negotiations, the Foundation recommends that following actions ought to be prioritized for the remaining period in 2012:
1. Completion of Parliamentary reform
2. Revision of the Law on the High Court
3. Speed up the process of appointment of the Constitutional Court judge, to ensure the normal functioning of the Court with 9 judges.
4. Revise the Constitutional Court Law in the same fashion as the HC Law, to determine concrete criteria and the procedures to be followed by the President of Republic for the appointment of CC judges.
5. Open the debate for constitutional amendments for the appointment of high court and constitutional court judges in order to bring our appointment system closer to the systems and best practice of other European countries.
6. Revision of the Law on the Status of Civil Servants
7. Report on implementation of the 3-year Action Plan for 2011 and possibly for the first half of 2012.
8. Finalize and adopt amendments to the HCJ law in order to permanently solve the issue of double inspectorate”
As already evidenced by the publication of the Progress Report of the European Commission, recommendations 1, 2 and 6 above, presented by the civil society are also requirements posed by the EC. The fulfilment of these three requirements before December 2012 is the condition for the European Council to approve the recommendation made by the European Commission to grant Albania candidate status. Civil society has been more ambitious in its requirements, as such is our requirement for the democratic development of the country. With the fulfilment of these 3 requirements, Albania will be granted candidate status, which will provide access to additional funds essential for its development, but will also further expose us to EU institutions and structures – providing for a very useful learning process for the country.
But, these 3 requirements will not accomplish the aspiration of a country that is agreed to be European by vocation. On October 10th, the Progress Report, as well as the Civic Monitoring Report, confirmed that despite the fact that in our history, we see ourselves as always, already European, the country’s political, economic and social facts tell us that we are only almost European.
For the Civic Monitoring Report, visit www.soros.al .
Adela Halo, Program Manager, Good Governance and Integration, Open Society Foundation for Albania/Soros.
