Whoever took a careful look of the constitutional amends for the justice
reform must have noted that there are two main points to fight
corruption in justice and in any other public office.
One of them is the Special Anticorruption Structure of the Prosecution, which has a clear task: to represent the Prosecution against judges, Prosecutors and high-rank officials in the Anticorruption Court. These prosecutors are considered as independent even from the Prosecutor General.
Another key issue is a structure that will evaluate the integrity of all judges and prosecutors. This structure is called the “Independent Qualification Commission”, which is the main arteria of the reform chapter that defines the measures for earning public trust. The USA, through the US Ambassador, Donald Lu, have taken co-authorship of the justice reform.
Are the words of the Ambassador said only in confidence? Whoever has seen the constitutional amends for the justice reform, is clear that the answer of this question is “no”. The co-existence of the reform, undertaken by the USA, has a constitutional guarantee that anything that will happen with judges, prosecutors and other officials will take place under the watch of the approval of the USA and EU. The constitutional reform foresees a special structure, never used before in Albania, which is called International Mission of Monitoring. This is described as a cooperation between the EU, USA and partner organizations.
Led by the EU, the International Mission of Monitoring has the right to appoint foreign observers in both levels of the Commission, which will evaluate if judges and prosecutors are honest and professionally competent.
Although they are called “observers”, the foreigners have similar competences with the members of the independent qualification commission. As regards access to any document of the Albanian government, except for the classified ones, the international observers have the right to identify or give opinions in every phase of the qualification of judges, prosecutors and their councilors, especially as regards audit of assets and performance evaluation by the qualification commission.
Will these commissioners with unusual power have anyone above their heads? The question is almost rhetoric. The constitutional changes give international observers the right of what is called a complete scrutinize of any individual and documentation to monitor the process until the election of commissioners.
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