Strategically located on the Adriatic Sea, between Eastern and Western Europe, Albania is a small country. However, after the downfall of a repressive communist regime in the early 1990s, it gained an outsize reputation as a hub of organized crime and corruption.
Getting a handle on international drug-trafficking networks and pervasive graft at home has been a tall order. But pro-Western Prime Minster Edi Rama – at 6 foot, 7 inches, reputedly the world’s tallest leader – is proving up to the task. He decisively won a fourth term in May, riding on popular support for his cleanup campaign.
Just last week, 10 suspected members of a cocaine and money-laundering ring were arrested by SPAK, a specialized anti-corruption unit set up in 2019. In recent months, SPAK has also gone after senior public officials, including from Mr. Rama’s governing Socialist Party.
“I have told all those around me that everyone must answer individually for any wrongdoing,” Le Monde reported Mr. Rama as saying last December.
Polls show that 76% of Albanians support SPAK. “For at least two years,” analyst Lorenc Vangjeli told the national CNN affiliate, “SPAK has been rising as the most trustworthy institution” in the country, on the promise of ending impunity.
Combating crime and corruption and reforming the judicial system are key conditions for Albania’s bid to join the European Union. (The country joined NATO in 2009.) Several EU member states have provided training, technology, and other support to help Albania make headway against clan-based mafia operations as well as insidious, everyday bribery.
“The EU is an amazing source of know-how when you want to build a functioning democratic state,” Mr. Rama told an interviewer on Polish TV in May.
Public education campaigns, such as the annual Week of Integrity, help raise awareness around business ethics and corruption-prevention mechanisms. And digital access to government services is another key tool.
“Digital services reduce corruption by removing physical interaction, cutting queues, and creating transparency,” Minister of Public Administration and Anti-Corruption Adea Pirdeni told a conference in June. With 95% of services now accessible online, Euronews reports, Albania is also developing artificial intelligence-powered tools to improve government procurement processes.
For Mr. Rama, joining with democratic EU states is both an impetus to get rid of corruption and a way to preserve gains in honest government and business practices.
“For the first time, people linked to political power are being investigated, indicted and convicted,” he said on Polish TV. “We need to make this irreversible – and that’s why we need to enter the EU.”
