Esposito: Albania strong political commitment to make reforms

TIRANA, November 13/ATA/- The Council of Europe is not only active in the fight against corruption in Albania but in all our membership, in our 47 member states and the key documents we use for the action against corruption are two important treaties; Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, and the other one is the Civil Law Convention of Corruption, Gianluca Esposito, Head of Action against Crime Department and Executive Secretary of GRECO said the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA).

“We also have a number of non-binding treaties, non-binding texts that help member states deal with corruption both in the preventive side and the repressive side. Albania is no exception, Albania needs to implement these standards but also to make sure that these standards produce concrete results in practice. The last report on Albania focused on the three main areas; the prevention of corruption of members of Parliament, of judges and the prosecutors. And this is the topic of the fourth evaluation round of (GRECO), Council of Europe anti-corruption body,” he said.

“GRECO report said that, there has been progress, and I think it is important to recognize that progress exists, while at the same time highlighted the areas where the progress is still needed. There has been progress, just to give you a few examples; in the area of the members of Parliament, there’s a new regulation that relates to lobbying, how the members of the Parliament relate to lobbies, a new Code of Contact for the members of the Parliament has been adopted,” Esposito added.

“It is important to make sure that all these texts are actually effectively implemented, so the Code of Contact of the Parliament is not only important to have a Code, but you have to make sure that this is effectively implemented, implied in practice. That’s why we need to see the continuity of the reform,” Head of Action against Crime Department and Executive Secretary of GRECO said ATA.

“These are steps in the right direction but the creation of any institution in itself it’s not a guarantee of the result. What’s important is not the creation of an institution but to make sure that the institution produces the results it is made to achieve. So, yes it is important to have a Special Prosecutorial, yes it’s important to have a Special Investigative Body, but we want to make sure this actually delivers investigation prosecutions and eventually convictions, that includes not only prisons but also confiscations of assets,” he said.

“Countries choose different models, so this is one model, by no means the only one, but it’s a choice the Albania authorities have made, it is a very legitimate choice, what is important however is that, besides the choice, that choice produces the ultimate results and that we’ll be watching very closely. It’s very hard to compare countries, every country has its own problems, I know this may seem politically incorrect but it’s actually true, when I look at the situation in different countries, I can see every country has specific issues, in the countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina or in Serbia, in Croatia or in France, Germany are not the same issues you have here in Albania, some do overlap some others are similar but some are different,”he stressed.

“So it’s very hard to compare apples and pears, and I don’t’ do that, I don’t compare apples and pears. What I am interested more is the fact that Albania has shown a very strong political commitment to make reforms, these reforms are in the making, they haven’t finished yet, they not only need to be finished but also need to be implemented. We are watching this process very closely, we are working together with the authorities to complete this process, you’ve quoted before the GRECO report, this is a step in dialogue, it’s not the last step, but it is a step in that dialogue,” he concluded. //a.i/