“From Property to Progress” was the regional conference that brought together the Western Balkan countries in Tirana today around a shared vision: digital transformation, legal certainty of property and European integration.

The conference, attended also by Prime Minister Rama, was organised by the State Cadastre Agency, with the support of the EU and the Council of Europe, and with the presence of representatives of cadastral institutions from the Balkan countries, the Delegation of the European Union and international partners.

The General Director of the State Cadastre Agency, Lorena Goxhobelli, stressed in her remarks that the digital transformation of the Cadastre is not merely a technological process, but a reform that directly affects citizens’ lives, legal certainty and the country’s economic development.

“When we speak about the digital transformation of the Cadastre, we are not speaking about technology for technology’s sake. We are speaking about citizens who no longer need to question whether their rights are protected. About professionals who can access reliable data without delays. About investors who can make decisions with confidence. We are speaking about a state that can plan its territory, manage its resources and govern land on the basis of accurate data and informed decisions, not on approximations or assumptions. This is the true value of cadastral transformation,” Goxhobelli said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rama said that “in Albania’s European integration process, the success of digital transformation is a determining element in terms of the pace and speed of our process and progress, allowing us to benefit from all the advantages of moving from an era of linear progress to an era of exponential progress. Naturally, we want to benefit as much as possible when it comes to the highly intricate and complex issue of property in Albania.”

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you so much for being here and thank you in advance for your patience in enduring my speech as well.

First of all, I would like to say that this important conference, related to a very sensitive topic for everyone, but especially for us in Albania, coincides with a very important moment: the end of the first phase of Albania’s negotiations with the European Union and the beginning of a new phase. We have opened all chapters, and now, with the interim benchmarks set, we are entering the phase of beginning to close the chapters.

As you may well know, the fulfillment of the interim benchmarks by Albania, and the setting of the closing benchmarks, are very crucial for the fundamentals cluster, which also includes Chapter 23, concerning the judiciary, fundamental rights, and property rights.

In Albania’s EU integration process, the success of digital transformation is a defining factor in the speed of our progress. And I must say that, for countries like ours, what has come with new technology is truly a blessing, because it allows us to make leaps that otherwise would have been impossible. It allows us to look to the future with a completely different spirit, and to take advantage of the shift from an era of linear progress to one of exponential progress.

We have already seen the benefits of this in many areas, and we want to make the best possible use of it when it comes to the highly complex issue of property rights in Albania. I do not think there is another country in this part of the world, not even in our region, where property rights have been placed under such pressure.

Over the past 35 years, we have had to deal with an extraordinarily complex reality, which is perhaps the deepest challenge we have faced. We moved from a completely nationalized country, where private property did not exist and where even dreaming of owning a private car was impossible, to a situation in which the state lost all control over the territory. An enormous demographic boom after the fall of the communist regime also shaped the territory and the very concept of property itself. While former owners believed that freedom had finally brought the return of their properties, we also had to face a full-scale assault on land and an incredible number of developments that created a completely new layer of ownership, not through legitimate historical titles, but through land occupation.

And beyond that, although for some mysterious reason the communist regime did not destroy the property archives, but instead preserved them very safely, what happened to those archives during the 1990s was an absolute disaster.

As a result, we inherited yet another layer of ownership: falsified property titles. Bringing order to all of this is an extraordinary challenge. It involves tricky and painful compromises, because there is no way to start again with a clean slate, one way or another.

On top of that, we had a judiciary that became deeply involved in worsening the situation. We lost enormous amounts of land belonging to the state and the public through court decisions that are simply incredible in their absurdity.

I do not think there is another country where courts award claimants more land than they request. Imagine someone asking for five hectares and receiving 200 hectares from the court. It is obvious how and why this happened. We had to move forward with new legislation, which was also complicated because one decision — in my opinion, a good decision — was among the very few consensual decisions taken by parliament at the beginning of the 1990s: giving farmers documents granting land-use rights. However, what began as land-use rights turned into another avenue for abuse, evolving into land appropriation. We saw beaches appropriated. We even saw the sea appropriated. I do not believe that, in your experience, you have encountered anything similar in a country’s cadastre — sea owners, sea parcels.

So we went through a new legislation, we worked very closely with diligent partners, and we also got a green light from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, about our new approach. But still today, we have to face problems because some judges have decided that they can rule today based on laws that were yesterday. So, the new law in place for compensation can be bypassed and court decisions that create an overburden on the state finances can happen even today.

So, it’s quite a complicated thing. And I’m not complaining, I’m just sharing an experience choosing the not easy path to bullshit you with how beautiful everything is in our country, but honoring you as guests with some entertainment instead of some boring speech. So, it’s very entertaining, frankly, when you look at it from outside. It’s a never-ending, complicated overall. But we didn’t give up. We are working hard.

I think the new technology is helping us a lot to address what otherwise would have been impossible to address. You know, you may think it’s an exaggeration, but it’s a literal exaggeration episodes of the real life in Albania that working with maps that were opened and closed many times, someone had to be a victim of open and close, because one court ruled that the property he claimed was in the hole of the map where the edge was open and closing so many times that created a hole.

So, imagine having a court decision that says your fortune is in a hole and you cannot get it, but it’s there. For the rest, I’m sure you’ll hear a lot of technicalities about how we are trying to address all these issues. But I will conclude by saying one line that the General Director mentioned in her opening remarks, which is about the integrity of the data you use, because at the end, new technology, artificial intelligence can do miracles but can also bring you towards another deadlock if the data are not correct.

So, this is a big challenge to feed the model with the right data and to give the model all the capability to give you back what you are looking for. So, yeah, I have a written speech here that you don’t want to listen to. I’m sure, you know, the European state is built with this and that it’s really very, very difficult exercise. It’s the most difficult part of our negotiation process and of our state building process. But I think it’s coming slowly but steadily to an end. I think that with the full digitalization that is now close to being concluded and with the blockchain that will be used, will save whatever can be saved after so many years of occupiers of all sorts getting in the land, the property realm of our country.

So, I very much praise the help and the efforts of our partners, the European Union first and foremost, which has been graciously considering our demand to help this process with the cadaster. And now with the EU, we are doing something which works and works very, very good.

So, we’ll conclude that, hopefully. While the rest of the partners have provided very good advice, and we are thankful also to them, and I want to thank also some of the people I recognize in this table from our side that each and every one in his or her position has done the right things and is doing the right things so soon we’ll come up with the reform of the agency we will bring together more tasks under one umbrella because having separate agencies has not helped the process because going each one in its own direction has created more confusion and has brought more troubles.

Now I think we have a good idea about how to reshape the property administration from A to Z with a merge of several agencies and the rest just keep going and do the work. We have the blessing and the curse to have a tutor, it’s called EU, who tells us this is good, this is bad, you have done good, you have not done so well, so keep going, do this, do that which is a big help.

Before coming here, I was with the central bank governor of Austria, and we were talking about that, and we were talking about the European Union. And I said, listen, the European Union is something you can complain about the whole day. But with the European Union, one thing is sure. At night, you will not have nightmares, if you choose another path, during the day you might feel freer, but at night you’ll have nightmares. So, there is no alternative to European Union in my view. There is no plan B, there is no plan C. It’s the right place to be.

Of course, you know, it’s a place of people and it cannot be paradise but still is with no alternative. And we are thankful for that.

Thank you.