Another important factor, influencing on the actual size of corruption, in Albania, has been the political instability. This instability has brought about the variability in the public leading structures, thus paving the way to corruptive practices' penetration, being later infiltrated in every level of governmental pyramid.

The collapse of the pyramid schemes in 1997 - after they had enriched many high-level political figures - wiped out the life savings of the poorest Albanians, led to major disturbances and cemented the public distrust toward public institutions. A vicious cycle has emerged in which corruption acts as both a cause and a consequence of a chronically weak state and weak public institutions.

Coming out from a system where everything was state owned and everybody was working for the state, people in Albania were too slow in understanding clearly the concepts of conflict of interests.

Following the 1997 disturbances a newly elected government launched an anti-corruption initiative with donor support (World Bank - main donor).

Based on these results and also on the work of governmental anti-corruption group was designed a program to fight corruption. This government's program was broad and comprehensive, including more than 150 specific measures in the areas of economic policy, rule of law, public administration, procurement, audit, and public awareness.

Implementation of the program to date has been mixed at best, due to a several objective and subjective factors.

Firstly the political leadership itself was not free from the charges of corruption. Moreover, ownership of the program has diminished over time. The Prime Minister changed three times in a two-year period.

Also another problem has been the once it looked that there is real commitment from government side to implement the Anti-corruption matrix the Kosovo crisis started, and Albania was faced with a half a million refugees problem. This crises forced corruption to go out of Agenda of both government and donors.

After this crisis the flag to encourage and help Government in the implementation of the Anti-Corruption measures was taken by Friends of Albania.

After some several meetings about this issue and especially after the 22 July 1999 Friends of Albania International Conference in Brussels, it was concluded that Corruption along with Law and order problems remain crucial areas in need of solution. It was proposed than that the Anti-Corruption Action Plan (Matrix) should be revised.

As a result a revised Anti-Corruption Action Plan was prepared by the governmental group, updating the measures and implementation monitoring mechanisms. (The revised Anti- Corruption matrix attached)

CREATING A FAVORABLE INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL ENVIRONMENT FOR CURBING CORRUPTION

· Public Administration Reform

Background

On November 1999, a new law on the Status of Civil Service was approved. In addition, a number of regulations, guidelines and relevant procedures are designed and approved up to now, to make possible implementation of this law.

As the law defines, its scope covers the institutions of central and local public administration, including Parliamentary administration, the presidential administration, administration of the Council of Ministers, the ministries, independent central institutions, municipalities and regions. Also, a Department of Public Administration near to the Council of Ministers is established to develop, implement and oversee the implementation of the government's policies on the civil service and other personnel issues. But, the scope of work of this Department covers only the administration of the Council of Ministers and ministries, while the law covers the other independent central institutions and the local ones. The other institutions and the local government have to create their own department of personnel to manage their civil service in accordance with this law and other regulations.

As a part of reform, a new position is now functioning in Albanian ministries. It is the General Secretary, who is chosen/nominated as a technical expert, in order to provide the continuance of work in these institutions, when political persons (minister/deputy minister) have to leave. In addition, there are some efforts in preparing job description for each departments, sectors and employees only in central institutions.

The Civil Service Commission is defined by law as an independent institution charged with the supervisory responsibility over the management of the civil service at all institutions falling within the scope of this law. But, this Commission does not function since two of five members are not nominated yet.

As the law defines, the hiring in the civil service has to be carried out by means of open competition based on merits. DPA has to perform a long procedure for hiring a person at the central institutions. The personnel department has to do the same at the local level. But, there are many practical cases, when this procedure is not implemented and other factors have influenced the hiring process.

Despite the steps done, there are many critical issues regarding the public administration. A very harmful idea, that is widely extended, is that employment in public administration is considering by numerous people as temporary/ transitory employment, just to get some experience, in order to be able to work in the private sector. There is no any job performance evaluation system. A number of civil servants don't have any professional capacities and background for a given job. Training system hasn't give concrete results. There is no a training strategy and a special structure to coordinate this process. A number of civil servants can leave the job, even though they have profited training at the expense of state. The civil servant are frequently accused for lack of professionalism and accountability and unethical behavior in performing their job, getting bribes or using government property for private gains, etc. However, detection and punishment of corruption cases are very few. The spheres where corruption practices are pervasive include, public procurement, custom and tax offices, privatization process, etc.

Objectives

Restoring and building the trust to the central and local public institutions, both through correct implementation of the Law "On the Status of Civil Servant", and punishment of all civil servants accused/ found in corruption practices.

Actions

· Extension of the law on status of civil servant at local level and establishing and functioning of relevant structures, such as personnel department.

The status of civil servants set forth uniform regulations on conditions and procedures for entering the public service, career advancement, rights and duties of civil servants in order to create a professional stable and efficient civil service. According to its provisions, this law has to be implemented immediately at the local level, through finding right options, taking into consideration the principle of autonomy. This will bring the qualified and right people to local administrate, helping so in increasing public services quality.

· Functioning of Civil Service Commission

As a structure where civil servants can appeal for any unfair dismissal from public administration, it is very important the nomination of two other members of this Commission and its normal functioning. It also critical the monitoring of this commission in order to ensure transparency and efficiency in the nomination process of civil servants.

· Increasing transparency in government operations

The fight against corruption requires measures to increase transparency of government operations. There are some elements that should be carried out rapidly such as:

· The implementation of freedom of information legislation that informs citizens of the procedures for the government services, curtailing attempts to subvert the system or to demand gratuities for information that legally should be public. There is a need for a public awareness campaign about this law as many (public and public administration employees) are not aware what this law is about.

There is a feeling that government allows civil society to participate only in selected processes and in others where it does not feel comfortable civil society is not allowed to participate. This fact it is observed even in cases when international organization are involved in helping government. These actors instead of being transparent justify themselves by saying that …the drafting of a certain law…is strictly governmental job.

· Encouraging competition in public service

Competition removes the monopoly power of government offices reducing corruption. It discourages extortion of clients because they can take their business to a competing office when confronted with irregular demands or services.

· Applying of Sanctions

Applying sanctions to corrupt acts is an important step toward establishing accountability. In Albania sanctions are centered in legislation and penal codes e.g. giving and taking bribe from the public official is sentenced with fine or up to 10 years. Persons who denounce corruption should be aware about the sanctions and should be encouraged receiving part of the fine. For smaller cases of corruption government should be encouraged to establish sanctions even outside the formal legal system. Authorities can fire public officials engaged in corruption.

o Drafting and approving Law for confiscation of wealth received by illegal sources.

This is a important step in impeding corruption in public admiistration.

· Institutional incentives to fight corruption

The public administration reform should include institutional incentives to promote ethical behavior in civil service and avoid corruption. These incentives can bolster morale, professionalism and productivity. Up to now it is not seen that these incentives are being applied in the Albanian reform of Public Administration.

Some of the incentives could be:

o Salary increase,
o Improvement of working conditions and
o Monetary and non-monetary awards such as public recognition and professional awards in order to attract and retain qualified personnel.

· Improving the functions and operations of controlling and monitoring institutions as well as looking for possibilities to establish new ones

Background

Albania has several institutions that supervise the state structures but these institutions need to improve their activity. Some of these institutions are:

· The High State Control for economic and financial control of state institutions and state juridical persons.

· The People's Advocate (Ombudsman) defends the rights, freedom and lawful interests of individuals from unlawful or improper actions or failures to act of the organs of public administration.

· The anti-corruption sector at the General Prosecutor's Office that exercises the criminal prosecution.

· Anti-Corruption Sector in the State Security Agency that develop strategies to fight corruption.

· Anti Corruption Monitoring Group established by Prime Minister decision

· Other governmental bodies and Agencies that address corruption issues.

o Objective

The fight against corruption should be focused in the improvement of institutions that are supposed to fight corruption and in the establishment of new institutions and offices with controlling and monitoring functions. Units should be established for internal monitoring of corruption in institutions and increase the cooperation between institutions in their fight against corruption.

o Actions

· Improving the role of people's advocate (Ombudsman) and including it in the governmental anti-corruption matrix.

· Improving and strengthening the role of Supreme Audit Office (High State Control) to curb corruption.

Based on constitutional and legal provisions, the High State Control monitors, and identifies every phenomena, problem or activity that is against the legal laws and regulations about the state budget. It can denounce and condemn the activities that are against the law and it can recommend measure to improve the situation.

In the governmental Anti-Corruption matrix High State Control has several objectives like:

· Establishing efficient foreign auditing institutions.

· Improving the methodology on audit planning.

· Increasing the training capacity within SAI;

· Increase the cooperation between SAI and other governmental institutions.

· Increasing the transparency in the auditing procedures.

· Increasing the quality of auditing etc.

However it should be said that some issues of concern are:

· Independence of the Institution. High State Control does not have its independence in the Constitution and many people believe that this is an issue of concern. What should be done for the independence to be formalized and institutionalized?

· The role of the High State Control in Legislation improvement. When a new draft law/regulation is prepared the normal procedure is that this draft law/regulation is sent for comments to line ministries and after these comments are received it goes to the Juridical Office of the Prime Minister and than it is passed by Council of Minister. The fact is that none of these draft laws or regulations (of whatever nature) have been sent to the High State Control for any comments or suggestions while this is the Institution that is supposed to control their implementation.

· What happens with the recommendation of the High State Control. In fact nobody knows what happens with the cases that they send to Prosecutor office or for the measures they propose for the cases when they found that the law has been broken. There is evidence that many of them are not taken into consideration from the respective institutions. This is a point of a future research consideration.

· Supporting and encouraging the work of the governmental Anti-Corruption Monitoring Group

Prime Minister has ordered the creation of the Anti-Corruption Monitoring Group, which will be comprised by:

- Board
- Anti-Corruption Unit.

This measure has been advised by the Council of Europe and the technical assistance is coming from this donor. What should be emphasized here is the fact the employees of the Anti-Corruption Unit are under the Civil Service Law. The role of this struture is still to be seen.

· Improving the Public Procurement system

Background

Procurement is one of the areas mostly affected by corruption. The National Public Procurement Agency is the central body that coordinates and improves the public procurement system. The National Public Procurement Agency is included in the government Anti-Corruption matrix but still there are a lot of problems to be solved in the future in order to have a competitive procurement system that limits the authority of government officials and affect in curbing corruption.

Objectives

Improvement of the law on Public Procurement in order to bring it in the same lines with the Procurement laws of Western Countries. Strengthening the institutional capacities of Public Procurement Agency, training of its employees, as well as establishment of an adequate information system for the tender's notices and winning announcements.

Actions

There are different ways to address this issue:

One is the employment contract should address this issue by stating a minimum period staying in the position and also every training should be followed by a minimum period staying in the position after the training.

Second would be improvement of their status. This agency is one the most important in the fight against corruption where the image should be very positive. Ethics is another important issue for the Agency.

· Developing of Cross-Institutional training program where views of the National Agency should be faced with the views of procurement officials in different level of government in order to have a common understanding of the Law and procedures.

Reform of the political party sphere

Corruption in the political party sphere is not mentioned in Albania when the main attention is focused in the corruption of public administration sphere. However, there are rumors about the fact that financial sources of parties as well as their expenses are not made public. Increasing the transparency in this direction is a step toward curbing corruption. There is a need to emphasize this fact with new general election approaching in July of this year and political parties campaign in the horizon.

- Economic Activity of Political Parties?

REFORMING THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Corruption is a serious problem in the judiciary (as well as in the rest of the public administration), notwithstanding that both the giving and receiving of bribes are crimes under Albania's Criminal Code.

When the issue of corruption is mentioned in Albanian all the people think about the courts. Courts are places when various conflicts are solved so the reforming of the judicial system should be a priority.

Combating corruption in the judiciary will require addressing a series of issues. These include reform of legal education, upgrading the professionalism and quality of judges, improving the physical infrastructure of the courts, and the publication and dissemination of legal information, including judicial decisions, as well as working intensively and extensively with the internal code of ethics of the judges themselves.

Legislative reform in judiciary

Background

Since its transition, which began early this decade, Albania has made remarkable progress in passing legislation anticipated to have significant future relevance to public and private sector activities. Rather than too little legislation, however, a significant problem now is "legislative overload" (i.e. too many new laws enacted too quickly for the public and private sectors to absorb properly) and weak implementation and enforcement of laws. In the mean time aside of this "overload" the inconsistency of the legislation add to the problems and overall confusion of the system. The weaknesses in the judiciary lead to corruption and are due to:

• Political influences in judicial appointments and dismissals;
• Poor legal education, including judicial education;
• Low salaries;
• Poor court and case management procedures and techniques;
• Lack of trained court personnel;
• Vastly inadequate physical infrastructure;
• And lack of access to up-to-date legal information.

The judiciary administration should improve these issues in order to curb corruption.

Objectives

Quality and consistency of Albania's new legislative framework needs to be reviewed and gaps, internal inconsistencies and other inadequacies addressed, not as a one-time exercise, but through a permanent domestic institutional structure. An institutionalized effort should be taken to come up with the identification of the inconsistencies and conflicts within the legal framework.

Actions

• Publication and dissemination of legal information, including judicial decisions in order to increase the transparency in fight against corruption.
• Strengthening judicial independence involves revising procedures for appointing, assigning, remunerating, and removing judges and prosecutors to insulate them from political influence

Designing code of ethics for the judges and working intensively and extensively with judicial administration in order to implement it.

Enforcement of judicial decisions through strong mechanisms. In Albania, where the rule of law is not yet firmly established and judicial decisions are often ignored, formal and fair enforcement mechanisms which work are badly needed. The recent approval of the Law on Judicial Police opens premises to improve the situation in this direction.

• Increasing the uniformity of legal draftings. This should be done through a permanent law commission that will play an important role in addressing the problems of substance or content, shortcomings, terminology, translation etc.

Recruitment and professional training

Background

Improving the level of basic legal education is imperative. It is also an urgent need to secure that judges have the requisite specific judicial knowledge and qualifications. With the opening of the Magistrates school in 1997, the government undertook an important step in this regard. Although much remain to be done to upgrade its faculty and curriculum, this school already functions as the sole institutions in charge of educating new judges.

The main problems are related with the weaknesses of the level of legal education and the lack of trainings. The organ that has the duty to train the judges is the Magistrate School.

Objectives

The main objective is to improve the legal education through improvement of school education and development of trainings as well as the improvement of standards of requirement of judges and prosecutors.

Actions

• Improving the level of basic legal and further on education for magistrates. Albanian has a poor legal education. The strengthening of the legal education should be done through a fair selection of students based on skills in order to prevent corruptive practices in their selection. Another point is the further on education of judges and prosecutors through trainings because of frequent changes of legislation.
• Magistrate School. This school has focused its limited resources mainly in the preparation of the new judges while it has come the time for this school to think for the training of existing judges as well.

Training of the pedagogical staff of the Law Faculty

• Improving the institutional capacity and curricula of the Law faculty

Designing trainings about the cases of corruption

o Court administration

Background

The court trials are involved in the small rooms without sufficient chairs to sit on and sometimes the people are not allowed to participate in court trials that are open for the public. Among most important problems is the delay of court trials without any legal causes and unethical conduct of judges.

Objectives

Open and transparent court trials, improved infrastructure of the courts and improvement management of the courts.

Actions

• Eliminating the intentional delays of court proceedings and developing a fast and professional court system in order to prevent corruption. Nowadays, the delays of the court trial are a great problem that leads to corruption. The parts are often tired from the long court trials and after they lose the faith in the judicial system are more predisposed to give bribes. Making court trials proceed faster can be done in several ways. Some of them are:

· Protecting the witnesses through the designing and implementing of a law that defends them from the accused.

· Improving the system of subpoenaing witnesses.

• Establishing and implementing of sanctions for those lawyers that intentionally delay the court trial without any legal reason.
• Improving the physical infrastructure of the courts through investments from the state budget in order to improve the environment when are developed court trials.

• CURBING CORRUPTION IN ECONOMY

   

  PRIVATIZATION

  Background

  Albania made a very rapid early progress in private sector share of GDP to over 50% by the end of 1994 and more than 75%-80% [1] last year. During 1999-2000 serious steps were made towards strategic industries privatization. Albanian Mobile Communication Company (one of the most successful state owned enterprises) was sold and its now being operated by private hands. Major industries like Cement and other Industries were also privatized. National Commercial Bank was also privatized and has already started its operation under private management.

  Under consideration for near future privatization is Albtelecom. The Consultants' Group is working and has just presented the first report.

  The experience of Albania and other transition countries shows that during the privatization process are almost unavoidable cases of intentional or unintentional law violation. This possibility becomes bigger when "experiments" are being made and the impact of the politics in the economy development becomes greater.

  Objectives

  Create premises to have a transparent and efficient privatization process. Monitor the process and suggest improvements both in the legal framework as in the implementation mechanisms.

  Actions

• Suggesting improvements in the procedures for objects' evaluation (objects to be privatized) and the dispositions that deal with this problem

IMPROVE CONDITIONS FOR ESTABLISHING AND CONDUCTING BUSINESS IN ALBANIA

Background

Businesses are the supply side of the corruption coin. In this regard businesses are being aware that corruption is a challenge that they must face and that they, private sector have a role to play in eliminating this disease. However the picture is very complex and requires complex measures too.

Objective

Create a level playing field for establishing and conducting fair business in Albania.

Actions

Reduce the possibilities for Informal economy activities

Informal sector (gray sector) remains one of the main sources of corruption in the country. This sector is not comprised only by the enterprises that operate completely illegal but even by legal enterprises that declare less profit or do not declare their workers. Radical changes of Albanian's economy after the downfall of the communist regime have induced not only the change of goods' production structure, but also the structure of producers and prices of such goods. The estimation is that this sector gives more than 50% of the real GDP in Albania. One of the main negative impacts of this sector is that it creates an unfair competition with the regular sector.

For this reason in cooperation with state structures and business association it should be designed a focused strategy which would consist of:

• Further Liberalization of licensing procedures
• Reduce bureaucracy in establishing a business
• Simplify customs and tax procedures
• Review the social insurance procedures and tariffs
• Raise the public awareness about the informal sector

• Establishing modern corporate governance standards

These standards would help to reduce the supply side of corruption. By these standards are meant the practices that companies use to run their board of directors, set polices for behavior throughout the company, develop business strategies, and generally steer the corporation. Concepts that contribute to effective corporate governance include

• Instituting independent audit
• Defining the concept of "conflict of interests" and how it affects members of the boards of directors and senior management
• Strong independent boards of directors, with a strong audit committee and internal audit functions;
• Laws and regulations guaranteeing shareholder rights, especially the rights of minority shareholders
• Established and accepted standards of financial accountability and transparency within firms
• Commitment to honest and fair dealings with all elements of the community (employees, suppliers, customers, neighbors etc)

• Strengthen business associations in Albania

IMPROVE THE WORK OF GOVERNMENTAL STRUCTURES THAT DEAL WITH BUSINESS ACTIVITY

Customs

Customs is one of the institutions most cited for corruption in Albania. Since the Albanian Government started the Anti-Corruption Plan in 1998 Customs were at the center of the efforts for reducing corruption. Since that time some results are achieved as following:

1. In cooperation with Custom Assistance Mission, the Custom Department is reviewing the organization and structure of the existing units of internal control. Job description for inspectors of control in the center and regional units has been designed and also the annual auditing plan has been completed.
2. Final guidelines for the organization of the control service after the custom clearance were prepared in cooperation with CAM.
3. The organizational structure of the internal control has been completed with all the needed personnel and training programs have been organized for all the inspectors of the Control Departments as well as regional departments
4. It has been drafted the monthly and annual program for each custom unit and their implementation is followed on daily basis; as a result of this work the incomes for the first 9 months of this year were 6.5 billion leks more than the period of a year ago.
5. It has been organized a special training in regard with the control of value application and work has started to draft a comprehensive training program.
6. The Draft-Code of Custom Ethics has been prepared in cooperation with Euro-Customs. This draft-code includes the training module for the ethics, which is expected to be soon approved.
7. In achieving the objective to increase the custom officials motivation: the reward system based on the fines and sanctions has continue to apply. The custom officials have received the reward according to the guidelines for special achievements; the new system of annual reward of custom officials has been already approved and will be applied for the end of 2000.

However there are still gaps to improve the work of customs.

Actions

• Strengthening the cooperation between Customs and Tax Offices regarding the information in goods entering and leaving Albania.

There is a need to find a way to compare the customs data with the tax data. There are cases when imported furniture is declared in the customs with the value of 200 USD and it is sold with the value of 2000-3000USD. Probably a pilot crosscheck data project may start and based on these procedures may be than shaped in order to have a system that matches data.

• Computerization of customs and their linkage with border countries customs. Cross border corruption is an Issue that should be more emphasized nowadays when the environment in the region is for a regional integration in European Structures. A practical thing to do in this regard is to start matching the statistics of the customs by country and find the "wholes" in order to point the direction, which should be improved in these institutions.

• Apply the Code of Ethics for Customs
  
  o TAX DEPARTMENTS

Actions

• Strengthening the implementation of tax collection procedures, through reorganizing of tax police based in a new law.
• Improving procedures for registration, collecting and paying of taxes
• Improving control on the tax declaration procedures
• Strengthening the professionalism and effectiveness of the tax administrators, through strict hiring procedures, based on specific criteria; continuous training programs and regular testing of administrators.
• Increasing transparency of tax administrate' s procedures, through
  
  o Preparing and publishing the guides based on the tax law,
  o Realizing public awareness campaign to make more clear the rights and obligations of taxpayers;
  o Unification of the punishment system in the case of non-paying taxes; and
  o Making the appealing procedures simpler.
  

• Strengthening strict procedures regarding tax control and their administration.
• Definition of penal and administrative responsibility of tax employees
• Improvement of information exchange
• Qualification of tax inspectors

Issues dealing with corruption coming out from the Prosecutor's Office Processed by IDRA Specialists

· · · There is no audit until today for the production of fiscal stamps, their selling and administration, while there are many cases where false fiscal stamps are caught, even it has been found out where they are produced (Macedonia). There is a need for urgent measures for a complete and analytical auditing of fiscal stamps.

· · · For more than 23 ships there are indications that they do illegal contraband and there is no evidence: who has privatized them, who is their actual owner, who has resold them and had bought them, who are their captains and their crew, what are their entrances and exits in Albanian territorial waters. There are evidences when some of these ships have changed their names to hide their crime evidence. There is a need probably for a specific law which would require the evidence for all the owners of Albanian ships, change of ownership, exact registration at the port capitenery, their licenses for sailing, their crew etc.

· · · There are cases when high state officials use their authority given by their positions to favor certain individuals or juridical persons (avoid their duty fees, win tenders etc). In the Penal Codes of Western countries there is a penal disposition that generally is called "traffic of influence". There is a need to include this disposition in Albanian Penal Code, which lacks it.

· · · Probably there is a need to design a law for the confiscation of the wealth acquired from illegal sources and once it is approved regulations should follow to make effective the implementation.

· · · Majority of the balance reports presented today in the tax offices are with false contents (this is exactly how it is stated in the internal report), so the Ministry of Finance should undertake measures to verify these reports and send to the prosecutor office cases when they find fraud.

· · · There is a need for strict control for the Auditing of " Biggest 200" (200 biggest companies evaluated by tax offices), some of which almost pay nothing (taxes and other duties) to the state.

· · · There is a need for a careful and extensive auditing of all the aids that enter in Albania, which as known are exempted from VAT and customs duties. However there is evidence that considerable part of them enters in the market or are re-exported in other border states.

ACTIVE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

· Mobilizing the Civil Society in the fight against Corruption

Background

The role of NGO's in the fight against corruption is very important in a democratic society. It should be said though that in Albania this role is still very weak. The strategy of fighting corruption up to now in Albania has been top-down i.e. starting from the governmental initiative. Also in this period in Albania NGO's lost a lot of time to find their place and position. That's why their role in the direction of the political, social and economic emancipation of the country is still low. However now Albanian NGOS has reached a certain level of development and with some channeling efforts may be ready to start a collective action against the epidemics of corruption in the Country.

Objective

Create a Coalition of Civil Society representatives, which would:

· Raise the public awareness for the costs and causes of corruption in Albanian society

· Support the reforms for the reduction of corruption in all state institutions

· Serve as a watchdog over governmental initiatives in the field of Anti-Corruption

· Foster the principles of integrity, transparency and accountability in governance and society.

· Encourage the civic society participation in the decision making process.

· Increase the cooperation among interesting groups in the efforts against corruption including governmental structures, regional and international initiatives etc.

Actions

· Improvement of Legal framework under which the NGOs operate in Albania
Although during these years the third sector has made development progress it should be said that Albania still lacks modern legislative rules for the formal status of NGO's as interlocutors and actors of the public participation in the process of policy making. Albania does not have a specific Law on Non profit organizations. Although the work has started since two years it is still in a drafting process. The drafts presented so far have been widely refused by the NGO community in Albania. In order to have a modern and accepted NGOI Law there is a need that the participation in the process of this draft law be a collective and institutionalized participation and not a random and rare one.

· Improving the Implementation of the Freedom of Information Law

· Create mechanisms of cooperation between state institutions and civil society in the fight against corruption.

· Extension of cooperation among NGOs
Promote joint actions and projects of NGOs.

· Strengthening of cooperation among NGOs in the region for the purpose of fighting corruption in regional level.
Corruption is not an isolated phenomenon within the borders of a country. In contrary it is a phenomenon that easily passes through borders. In this regard it is crucial the cooperation among NGOs in the region so they can exchange information, experiences, aware governmental structures etc. to reduce the corruption in their countries.

· Cooperation with International organization in the Anti-Corruption Efforts (Opening of a branch of Transparency International In Albania)
The role of international organizations is crucial as well. As previously mentioned in this material the Anti-Corruption Initiative was undertaken with the support of World Bank, Soros Foundation, USAID and EC. But the role of focused organizations as Transparency International, for example, is still missing. It is the time that Transparency International opens a national Branch in Albania.

STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

Background

Press and Media in general have had a development boom these years of transition in Albania. Many newspapers radio - broadcasting and TV stations have been established. Although the number of the media actors have increased dramatically this cannot be said for their quality. What can be seen in general for the moment in this field is:

• Most of the actors are technically underdeveloped (this means the professionalism of journalists and the technology)
• Dependence from certain business lobbies which finance them for their interests
• It is subject of political instrumentalization (which brings the issue of credibility of media)

Their role in the fight against corruption has increased in the past two years.

Objective

A strong, credible and professional media is a serious threat to all corrupted persons and structures. The work in this direction should consist of improvement of the image of the media, the professionalism of journalism in order to have a transparent and efficient communication tool with the public.

Actions

· Professional Code of Ethics for Journalists

The ethics of the journalists is not in the needed level, and the corrupted people are exploiting this by encouraging distrust in media. Here we should mention the sentence of a famous Albanian journalist: "..in Albania exists a press of the revolver type…". So, sometimes without real facts this "revolver" hits, becoming in this manner a promoter of the tension in political life in Albania. Sometimes the "facts" are fabricated and the next day they are denied in a small corner of the newspaper. Foir this reason it should be cooperated with the associations of journalists and their trade unions in establishing professional ethical rules in their activity.

· Training of investigative journalism
It would be very helpful if these trainings were organized in regional basis so the investigative journalists create regional strata that may think of their own channels of information and ways of cooperation.

· Trainings with the basic economic concepts for the journalists that cover economy in media.

· Joint training modules on the freedom of Information Law of journalists and offices of Public Information in governmental organizations.

· Monitoring of media for the cases of corruption presented in them

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Below follows an exhaustive inventory of International efforts to curb corruption in Albania

Support given by Friends of Albania members in the field of Anticorruption briefly:

• United Kingdom

Support for public administration reform