Corruption remains a main weakness

TIRANA, Nov. 13 – Corruption remains a main topic of attention for Albania and the international institutions and countries monitoring it along the path toward integration into the European Union.
That was mentioned again at the last meeting, conference held from the EU, Council of Europe and the Albanian government discussing their cooperation in combating corruption in Albania. The conference was held near the end of the three-year long Project against Corruption in Albania (PACA), funded with EUR2 million from the European Union and EUR0.13 million from the Council of Europe, through which the international institutions brought in the expertise and best practices of EU member states in preventing and combating corruption through improving planning and building policy, coordination, monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
Fighting corruption remains a main topic which the EU mentions repeatedly in the annual progress report for the country along its path of integration into the bloc. Time has come that Europe now is asking for concrete steps and tangible results in such a fight.
The international experts have been assisting anti-corruption reforms in Albania and have had a significant impact on the fight against corruption – notably, in recent constitutional changes to reform the system of immunities of high-level officials. The PACA team has improved the anti-corruption action plan and assisted in the harmonization of statistics on corruption investigations, prosecutions and convictions; it has fostered inter-institutional cooperation; it has built capacities to avoid corruption risks in the law drafting process, and it has carried out risk assessments in key sectors such as health, education, property, complaints against judges, and others. The work of the PACA team has supported the fulfillment of requirements specified in the European Commission’s Opinion on Albania’s application for EU membership.
EU Ambassador Ettore Sequi said that “the success of our assistance goes as far as your will and determination to benefit from it go. He added that the success of the project has been proportional to political will and determination to say ‘no’ to corruption”. The fight against corruption is an important requirement for candidate status and the opening of accession negotiations and to that end the need for a solid track record of investigations, prosecutions and convictions of corruption at all levels. “It is your responsibility to deliver on the recent reform of the immunity regime. It is your responsibility to implement the Anti-corruption Action Plan.”
CoE Deputy Secretary General Gabriela Battaini-Dragoni invited the Albanian authorities to use the momentum to continue their efforts to prevent and curb corruption and the civil society, the NGOs, the Albanian citizens to remain vigilant, to react and not to accept corrupt practices.
The PACA project started in September 2009, it is a 40-month project principally funded by the European Union and implemented by the Council of Europe. In the past 15 years, around 150 million from EU tax payers have been allocated to Rule of Law reforms in Albania.