By Zef Preçi, Executive Director of ACER
As Albania presents itself as closer than ever to the European Union, a troubling contradiction has emerged in its domestic legal and political debate. While the EU is moving decisively toward tougher and more harmonized criminal rules against corruption, Albania is simultaneously discussing changes that risk weakening accountability for abuse of office, one of the main gateways to systemic corruption.
On December 2, 2025, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a landmark political agreement on the first fully harmonized framework of criminal law against corruption. This agreement, soon to be formalized as a dedicated EU anti-corruption directive, seeks to eliminate legal loopholes between member states, strengthen sanctions, and ensure that corruption is prosecuted consistently across the Union. The message is clear: corruption in all its forms is considered a serious threat to democratic governance, public trust, and the integrity of the internal market.
This European development contrasts sharply with the narrative that has circulated in Albania in recent months. Public debate, often shaped by selective media reporting and political messaging, has suggested that abuse of office could be decriminalized or that European institutions somehow recommend easing criminal liability for senior officials. Such claims are misleading and fundamentally contradict the current direction of EU policy.
Within the EU legal framework, corruption is understood broadly as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Abuse of office or abuse of functions is not treated as a marginal or optional offense. On the contrary, it is a core criminal act that does not always require direct personal enrichment. A public official may commit abuse of office by unlawfully influencing decisions, manipulating procedures, misusing authority, or violating citizens’ rights, even when financial benefit is indirect or concealed.
The forthcoming EU directive explicitly includes abuse of functions among the criminal offenses that all member states must recognize and punish. Its objective is to prevent officials from sheltering behind formal decision-making powers while systematically diverting public resources, distorting procurement processes, or favoring politically connected companies. Abuse of office is regarded as particularly dangerous because it often operates behind legal and institutional façades.
The directive also introduces a much stricter approach to sanctions. It foresees mandatory minimum prison sentences for serious corruption offenses, accompanied by additional penalties such as bans from public office, exclusion from public contracts, and withdrawal of licenses and subsidies. For legal persons, the directive establishes harmonized financial penalties linked to annual turnover, with fines reaching up to five percent of global revenue or tens of millions of euros.
This approach challenges Albania’s current practice of imposing fixed and often ineffective fines on companies and treating corporate criminal liability as secondary. It also highlights deeper structural problems within Albania’s anti-corruption framework, where responsibilities are fragmented across numerous politically dependent institutions, inter-institutional cooperation is weak, and asset confiscation remains minimal.
The timing of the EU’s move is particularly significant. During 2025, Albania’s Special Anti-Corruption Structure intensified investigations into large-scale corruption involving senior officials and politically exposed persons. This has generated a counter-narrative portraying such investigations as attacks on governance or development. Yet the criminal offenses under investigation, including trading in influence, abuse of office, procurement manipulation, and diversion of public funds, closely match the definitions now being reinforced at EU level.
No European institution questions Albania’s right to govern or to pursue development policies. What is at stake is whether public power is exercised within the rule of law or transformed into a mechanism for private enrichment shielded by political rhetoric.
As Albania debates a new Criminal Code, the forthcoming EU anti-corruption directive offers a clear benchmark. It is not merely a technical instrument for future alignment but a political signal about the substance of European integration. Aligning with it would require strengthening, not weakening, criminal accountability for abuse of office, imposing tougher sanctions on corrupt businesses, protecting whistleblowers, and confiscating illicit assets more effectively.
The choice Albania faces is therefore not technical but strategic. It is a decision between genuine convergence with European standards and the preservation of domestic zones of impunity under the language of reform. Europe is tightening its fight against corruption. Albania must decide whether it will move forward with it or remain at a crossroads.
