Mocavei: Albania and Serbia must focus on the future

As supervisory of the judiciary reform in Romania, Mocavei declared that what should be done is implementing the laws and sending to prison anyone who commits crimes, even high-rank officials, as it has happened in Romania.

Monica Macovei: “I can only speak for the future, and the only solution for the future is peace and understanding. If there are minorities, and there are minorities from each of the countries to the other country, than they need to be protected. I can understand that there are still hard feelings, although it is quite a long time since then. I saw these hard feelings in Kosovo, for instance. But I also worked in Serbia, so I am neutral to these. I just want people to live in peace and to stop these offensive acts, crimes and this hate, because we are all human beings. We should learn to talk to others, to tolerate the others, to live with the others. Even if we don’t like the others, we don’t need to express it in an open and violent way.

Top Channel: Now you will start working with Albania. What should official Tirana expect from you? You represent the person who realized the judiciary reform in Romania, an issue that is one of the five key priorities for our country in the EU path.

Monica Mocaevi: They should expect that I will insist on the fight against corruption, the organized crime, money laundering, trafficking… and we know that there are such crimes in Albania. There are in all the Balkans. I will insist on this, on the good laws and most importantly on the implementation of the legislation, because in many countries we have laws which are never implemented, or not properly implemented, so implementation is the key issue. This means professional and brave prosecutors and judges, who would implement the laws no matter if there are ministers, prime ministers, MPs, mayors or whatever. This is what I did in Romania. I empowered the justice to be independent. I created the Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office, and now we have former Prime Ministers or current Ministers or Foreign Ministers or MPs and Mayors, and Judges and Prosecutors, serving sentences in prison for corruption or other criminal activities. One moment come for judges and prosecutors to realize that yes, “we can do this”, even if they are politicians. Because this didn’t happen for a long time. The first thing that is needed to put a country on the right track is to have a clean judiciary, because that would clean all the other systems. Of course I will look all the other aspects of the cooperation between Albania and the European Union, and my wish is to support Albania in advancing with the European accession path. I am for accession of all the countries in the Balkans.

Top Channel: When will you visit Albania?

Monica Mocavei: It was postponed. We don’t have a date yet. You’ll know in advance when we will have a date. I know Albania thanks to the missions that we had  with the Council of Europe of Human Rights to train Judges, Prosecutors, administrative staff and journalists on the Euroepan convention of human rights. I did some years ago a mission for anti-corruption on behalf of the European Commission.  I came many times to Albania. It is a lovely country and I look forward to go back and work with officials and with the people of Albania.

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