As part of the closing activities of Integrity Week, the 7th National Conference on the Right to Information was held today, a joint roundtable bringing together public authorities, European partners, civil society, and media organizations, to present an annual assessment and to address issues that require attention.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, who was present at the event, stated that based on the assessments of international authorities that monitor the performance of Albanian institutions, Albania now has a functional and sustainable architecture for transparency.

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Thank you very much and greetings to everyone.

I followed with close attention the entire course of the interventions made at this roundtable, and I want to begin by saying that we have divided the roles. The role of one group here is to see the glass as half empty, while the role of another group, which includes me, is to see the glass as half full, and within this dynamic we create the complementarity of democratic life.

Starting from the latest intervention of the half empty glass, I would like to draw attention not to the opinion of the government, but to the opinion of an authority that I believe is unquestionable in terms of professional capacity and integrity, namely SIGMA. In SIGMA’s assessment, which evaluates the performance of Albanian institutions from a sufficient distance to ensure a high level of objectivity, Albania has a functional and sustainable architecture for transparency. The result according to SIGMA, not according to me, is 8.6 out of 10 for the strategic and institutional framework and 7 out of 9 for the effective functioning of the Authority for the Right to Information.

Meanwhile, referring to the Transparency Index recently published by the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State Building, Albania has made a leap of around 5 percent within this year, moving from 73 percent to 78 percent in the transparency index, while the global average is 62 percent and the regional average is 69 percent. Therefore, Albania is 10 points above the regional average.

First, I am absolutely in agreement with what the lady said, that openness is not a threat. This is something I preach consistently, both at the government table and in all cases when we speak about this aspect. I genuinely believe that reluctance to share administrative information with anyone who requests it is absurd and only hinders or damages more than it protects. In addition to the lack of information, it creates a sense of suspicion and an atmosphere of conspiracy, as if something is hidden behind the information. We have discussed this with the Commissioner, and we recently held a joint meeting with the government, where together with the minister sitting next to me we emphasized to all members of the cabinet the necessity of greater focus on this aspect, because it is in everyone’s interest. It is in the interest of institutions, in the interest of the public, and in the interest of the country.

For this reason, we have also pushed forward the “Transparent Albania” project, which is a very ambitious project to have all information within a single virtual territory. This would greatly facilitate interactions between all information seekers and institutions, because it would be a single window where institutions would automatically be required to publish all their documentary activity, and where anyone interested could access it without going through requests, refusals, delays, and so on.

There is another element which is not justification, but a fact. A considerable number of these problems that appear here in the form of figures, as presented by the ladies, is linked simply to bureaucratic laziness. It is not a barricade to keep information hidden, but rather a matter of the internal functioning of the administrative mechanism, where the issue arises between the intensity with which requests arrive and the intensity with which responses must be provided. Naturally, this can be improved. It improves less than those who see the glass half empty would expect, but nonetheless, it does improve.

To be fully transparent, since we are at a transparency roundtable, I have made an observation to the Commissioner, to the extent that one can make observations to an independent institution. There is something missing in the activity of the Commissioner, namely the absence of sanctions for the highest authorities. The law is very clear. Ten days is the time limit to respond. Although ten days may be too long for the speed at which the world of information operates today, on the eleventh day, if there is no response, there is a sanction. That is what the law states, and the highest responsible authority must be sanctioned. We have asked all ministers to delegate this responsibility to the Secretaries General.

Do not forget that when we started this governing process, we had a major problem with illegal parking by all members of Parliament on sidewalks and in public green areas around Parliament. Where are they today. Why does no one park there anymore. Because sanctions were applied. MPs were fined several times in a row, and they understood that the game of illegal parking was over. Or there are no longer ministers’ cars running red lights, because ministers were fined for traffic violations. In this way, we shared the concern with the drivers, that they must drive normally like everyone else and not feel protected simply because a minister was sitting behind them. Sanctions in this case may not have the same dramatic effect as in the examples I mentioned, which are very concrete, but they will have their effect.

I do not want to go deeper, because then the glass might break if I start speaking here about issues related to freedom of expression and other claims. However, I want to say that in the meantime we have taken another commitment that shows the opposite of what is claimed by the half empty glass, namely, to decriminalize defamation for journalists. It is not that any journalist has been criminally prosecuted by government lawsuits over these years, nor have there in fact been lawsuits against journalists, because we stopped all such lawsuits many years ago. But this is not recorded among the reasons to feel free and to feel light in the work of the half empty glass. In any case, we will take this additional step, a step towards further relaxing the situation for journalists overall, even though I personally do not believe that the problem here is freedom of expression. The problem here is freedom of defamation.

So, I hope I have addressed some issues. There are of course many more issues to discuss in this context, but I want to assure everyone that we are not merely in a position of expressing will. We are in a position where we are systematically and persistently trying to materialize that expressed will into progress, even in this aspect. We have made sufficient progress, in my view, to be optimistic about making more progress.

I repeat, I understand everyone, and I sincerely understand all the demands and complaints, because in the end you live with this work and you have no reason to be satisfied with us. Meanwhile, it is our duty to be satisfied with you in all cases.

To conclude, I would also like to refer to something mentioned by the lady, if I am not mistaken, regarding technology and auditability. I believe there is a very large misunderstanding regarding auditability, a misunderstanding that I have seen even outside “our glass,” when I have followed various comments made even by high level authorities in the technology world regarding our artificial intelligence minister. The fact, however, is very simple. Technology, in the case of public procurement, and I hope we will be successful in implementing the project, will create an exponential acceleration of the process and will make the process immune to subjectivity in some of its stages, from the collection of documents to the assessment of document authenticity, to the overall evaluation of bidders’ dossiers. But in every case, anyone who wishes to re-verify the process manually and through documents will have the documents available. This is not something that will happen in a cloud and then produce an indisputable result emerging from the cloud. No. It is a digital process which, if the project is successful, will be an extraordinary technological innovation globally, not only here. For this reason, we are working closely with Microsoft and other experts. Everything will unfold completely differently, while anyone who has doubts, whether as part of the bidding process or as a commentator, will be able to take the documents and examine the consistency of the technological assessment with the documented facts. Therefore, I believe there is no cause for concern regarding this.

Meanwhile, technology is the great blessing of our time for countries like ours, because precisely through technology we can make epochal leaps that would be impossible under traditional linear progress. Technology gives us the opportunity to aim for things that until yesterday were unimaginable and to overtake countries that are far ahead of us in all respects. If today, for example, in public services, which is an aspect that naturally cannot be seen from the half empty glass, we have witnessed an epochal change in integrity and transparency, with 95 percent of services being online and delivered online quickly, without intermediaries and without bureaucracy, and if today in this respect we rank much higher than in many other areas, this is because technology enables it. Therefore, I believe that through technology, the aspects related to today’s debate are also addressable, so that interaction becomes much more automatic and requests for information receive automatic responses through information made available in a source such as Transparent Albania. In that case, there is no need at all to involve the Commissioner or anyone else.

For this, of course, we need to have capacities that we still do not have, for digitization and for the immediate networking of what happens. So, if today the institution produces X interactions and from those X interactions produces X results, all results that are documented and signed by someone in that institution are automatically entered into the source, and there, in the source, anyone who wants goes in and takes the information. And in this way, we do not enter at all into discussions on whether it is secret or not secret, whether it is publishable or not publishable, whether it is personal data or not personal data, because the separation is done already at the source. And I believe that 99% of the half empty glass problems are solved, and then the half empty glass, of course, will continue its own life and will raise its voice for areas where water is missing, I have repeated this continuously, I repeat it: progress is happening. More is needed, absolutely, and at this point we agree. Absolutely. At this point the harmony between the half full and the half empty is complete, be sure, ladies and gentlemen, so be sure that we will do the best at this point because not that we are good, but because it is the right thing that must be done for the common work and for the country.

Prime Minister Rama (after the intervention of the Commissioner for the Right to Information): I believe sanctions because at the end of the day they are not there to sit unapplied. And I do not believe in self-regulation of Albanians, of the Balkans, of Italians and Greeks, of this whole diverse world full of music and full of sun. I do not believe in self-regulation, and I return to the history of online media

As you have seen, not only has there been no self-regulation, but there has been continuous degeneration, always greater. Nevertheless, we gave up then and we do not intend to lay a hand in this direction, except after the EU has called itself fully to reason and has done the thing it should have done in time, which it is trying now, because now all countries see that the thing is going completely out of control, that online media, overall I speak, has become a territory where forces intervene that are forces not friendly to the EU, intervention happens here, intervention happens there, and naturally, if you “leave the house without windows, without doors, without a roof and claim that you sleep comfortably and that no one enters your house,” then you believe in a world that does not exist. But I repeat, this is a topic that is not for us. From our side, we will do something that 24 EU countries do not have. In 24 EU countries, defamation is punished criminally. We will remove the criminal aspect for journalists, for all those who live with information and work with information. I know that it will not be put on the merits that we have in relation to freedom, I am very clear about this, you will never count it to us as a positive gesture in the name of freedom, but this does not matter much because your task is not to recognize our merits. Your task is to tell us how wrong we are.

We are divided now, so with the half full glass I wish you all a Happy New Year, all of you and all who are in the hall. Forgive me for the second intervention, but the Commissioner “provoked” me, and cheers.