Cooperation, Taylor: “Albania still needs the CoE”

The new Cooperation program between Albania and the Council of Europe was presented at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the 2015-2017 period.

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Odeta Barbullushi, said the new document is in adapted to the euro-integration phase in which our country is right now.

Verena Taylor, General Director of Programs at the Council of Europe explains in an interview for Top Channel why the Council of Europe must continue to help Albania.

Top Channel: Albania has been a member of the Council of Europe for 20 years now. What is the role of the CoE nowdays, keeping in mind that Albania is a NATO member and EU candidate? Why should the CoE continue its work in Albania?

Verena Taylor: Indeed, Albania joined 20 years ago and this opened for Albania the road to all these possible memberships because the other organisations share the values of the CoE with regards to Human Rights, Rule of Law and Good Governance. So, the CoE is the first step, if you so want. But, secondly, a lot of things happened in these 20 years in Albania but also in the rest of the world and very much in Europe. The CoE developed also in those years and so did our standards. We now talk about standards in Human Rights which 20 years ago were not yet known. At the same time, Albania is still lacking behind a little bit with respect to standards that already existed at the time. So, Albania still requires support from the CoE with regard to those standards and complaining to those standards.

Top Channel: Regarding the Cooperation Document, the Programmatic work of the CoE has increased in the past four years. What benefits will Albania have in the future?

Verena Taylor: This is a method of cooperation we have developed with many member states. Albania is not the only one. The objective is to support the national domestic reform agenda at the same time and to help the country to respect the commitment made,upon joining the CoE, in areas of human rights, rule of law, organized crime, corruption, the functioning of the judiciary, freedom of expression and independence of the media. Thirdly, cooperation documents also aim at supporting Albania’s integration bid to the European Union. So, it is a three-fold aim and this is as important in the next four years as it was in the last four years. We did, indeed, achieve tangible results and this is the reason why the government said: Yes, we want to continue the work with the CoE in these areas because this really helps us move forward and our agenda to reach our objectives.

Top Channel: How do you find the cooperation with the Albanian government so far?

Verena Taylor: Our experience is very positive. There is a lot of enthusiasm from the government to cooperate with us. There is also a lot of support from donors and partners because we are not alone in this – we work together with the EU and some member states like Switzerland or Norway and fund activities. But, we find that especially on the legislative basis, “yes”, there is progress. Capacity building and implementation always take longer everywhere but we find a positive climate to work here.

Top Channel: There have been huge debates in Albania these past nine months regarding the justice reform. What role has the CoE in it?

Verena Taylor: There are several layers of CoE support with regard to the justice sector reform. Of course, first and foremost, there is the Venice Commission which looks at the justice sector from a constitutional point of a view – to align the justice sector with the constitution in a correct manner. But, secondly, we can support the government and the justice sector itself with reforms that aim at the better functioning of the judiciary, lest corruption, faster proceedings, better trained judges, more independence of the judiciary, and less intervention from authorities. This is more or less what we are aiming to the future.

Top Channel: As you mentioned, this reform is waiting for the opinion of the Venice Commission. What additional role will the CoE have in it and what are your expectations from it?

Verena Taylor: I can’t actually say much about the opinion of the Venice Commission because it is not known – they just started to look at the file. But, we have other instruments also – the Venice Commission is just the very well-known one. There are many others and in particular the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice which works directly with court systems and helps them to manage the case load better, it helps to attribute cases in a manner which makes it much more difficult to bribe judges, for example, and this brings measurable results. You can really measure before and after the intervention and see the difference.

Top Channel: What will be the focus of your work in the future, and how do you find the cooperation with the Albanian authorities? What will you do different in the next three or five years?

Verena Taylor: Our cooperation focuses on five areas, starting with the justice sector reform that you just mentioned and. If you ask me what should be different and what will be different, I would say a justice system that functions more in line with European standards, that there is less corruption and that there are faster proceedings – that would be our main objective.

Secondly, we work in the area of combatting corruption and economic crime and organized crime. There are also other actors working in these areas, not just the CoE. We have decided, together with the authorities, to concentrate on a limit number of areas, in particular to do with asset management, capacity building in the civil service in order to better deal with corruption but also with corruption education.

The third area is freedom of expression and the media where we will continue to work with the Audio Visual Media Authority and others in order to support people like yourself but also the media outlets.

Fourthly, we work on good governance. That is very much link to territorial reform which is already ongoing and I think in that area, in 5 years, this should be finalized – the objective of the reform should be achieved in 5 year time.

The fifth consists of intervention that has to do a lot with culturalheritage but also with young people, children’s rights, LGBT, etc. This is more a collection of smaller areas and we hope it will help Albania to have a society where diversity is respected and supported.

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