The corruption of the judicial system has intrigued the European Council
Group of States Against Corruption, known as GRECO. This Strasbourg
institution will start in January 2012 an evaluation round for Albania,
in order to complete the respective recommendations for ending the war
against judicial corruption.
The President of GRECO, Drago Kos: Practices has shown that it is easy to change laws and establish new institutions, but what appears difficult to be achieved, is their implementation on terrain. Albania is not a good example for this. Albania has serious problems with the implementation of the new legislation. This is the reason why GRECO, starting from January 2012, will start a new round for dealing with corruption in the highest possible levels. Then we hope that after this round, the legislation and the other institutions will produce the first results for fighting corruption in the highest levels.
According to the President of GRECO, you need a real political will for bringing politicians to justice. He values the Albanian prosecution for being able to at least bring the ministers to trial, but Drago Kosn says that the country needs to achieve a further step, that of having them righteously punished by the court.
Drago Kos, President of GRECO: You can consider yourself lucky for at least having them charged, prosecuted and under investigation, because other countries of the region wouldn’t even dare bringing a politician to trial. This shows that the system in Albania functions at least at the investigation level, but now you need a further step, while other countries need more than that. You should not be happy with that, just sending them to trial, but when they end up in court and the court actually does its work. Albania is not the worst country of the region, because it is undergoing a process which is the same as in the other countries of the region, and during this process it is difficult to bring the politicians to trial, if there is no real political will.
GRECO has published reports with recommendations for Albania in 2002, 2004 and 2009. The recent recommendations were related with the finances of the political parties and the prosecution, but the European Commission report, published on October 2011, noted that the GRECO recommendations had never been completely implemented by our country.
Prepared by: Arta Tozaj
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