"The fight against corruption is fundamental for integration"/ Kos: SPAK is yielding results, but the political culture must change

2025-11-18 20:46:00, Politikë CNA

"The fight against corruption is fundamental for integration"/ Kos:

In an interview with "DW", EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos emphasizes that the fight against corruption is fundamental to the progress of negotiations with Albania towards EU membership.

Kos said that the fight against corruption is included in the "Fundamental" chapters of Albania's integration into the EU. She stated that SPAK is working and is delivering results, but this is not enough as a change in political culture is needed and efforts must be made to ensure that corruption is not accepted by the people.

" Firstly, it is European taxpayers' money. And I am also responsible for EU taxpayers.

Secondly, progress has been made. Some cases in Albania have shown that the SPAK agency is working. If we see that cases have been discovered, it shows that we have also done a good job in the accession process. And the fight against corruption is in the group of so-called "Fundamentals", which means that this is really an area where we make a lot of efforts to help candidate countries. On the other hand, they have to make a lot of reforms.

For example, in Albania, the verification of judges has been carried out. It is not really easy. SPAK is delivering results. But this is not enough. It is about changing the political culture. A country can have the best possible laws against corruption but if corruption is widely accepted by people, then we have not done enough. So this is the main point of action."

Kos said that the real work begins now as all criteria must be met to then close the group chapters.

" It's important for us, but it's also something where we're really strict. In fact, I'm strict and we're strict on all the chapters that they have to fulfill and now Albania. I want to emphasize that we opened all the group chapters, but now the real work starts. So, we have to negotiate chapter by chapter. They have to fulfill the intermediate criteria, so there are some criteria that they have to fulfill. Once they're fulfilled, we'll be able to close the chapters as well.

"Organized crime, anti-corruption, the public procurement system, the judicial system, human rights, everything that is in the first group, is actually so important that we start and end with it. So we can also monitor developments in between," Kos declared.