Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at a meeting with heads of the customs and tax system of the Republic of Albania:

Ladies and gentlemen,

Directors of the customs and tax system of the Republic of Albania!

You are you here today because, as you have been earlier informed, a time of great challenges has come for the customs and tax officials of this state. A frontal battle will be launched across the Republic of Albania in order to protect consumers and put the state on the side of the businesses that pay taxes according to the law.

Of course, you are not here today to be informed about this major new challenge, but to directly receive the message of the Albanian government.

The government is determined to thoroughly carry out this new battle, which is not another action in the wake of an old customs and taxation tradition, but an operation that won’t stop until the rule of law is fully established in the space of economic and commercial activity in Albania.

This means firstly that we want each and every one of you to be part of the solution to this historical problem concerning informality, and not to be part of the problem. Or, said more bluntly, we do not want inappropriate behavior, indecent approach, illegal actions, which have characterized the history of the body that you are leading today, to become reasons for any of you to stray from the path of this battle.

This is definitely an open warning to all of you, and through you to all employees depending from you, because it has been well known for over 20 already that the high level of informality of our economy is not just a product of behavior, approach and illegal actions of those running a business, but also of the customs and tax administration which has its own share of the responsibility, precisely because of the behavior, approach and illegal actions of a quite large number of its employees.

The priority of this new chapter that we want to open in alliance with the consumers and in cooperation with businesses paying regularly taxes will be clear from the beginning to the end of your daily job. This is not a battle against business, but a battle to protect consumers, businesses and the Albanian state from those who perform economic and commercial activity against the law by stealing buyers, preventing others in the field of entrepreneurship through unfair competition, and stealing the money that the state needs in order to cut taxes, to increase wages, to invest in water supply systems, schools, hospitals and on.

This means that the first sentence you will say to your employees every day should be, respect and courtesy at the door of every business. Be thankful for every regular business and take measures against any business that is found in violation of the law. In any case, respect for courtesy. You and we, the government and the management team of customs and taxation will also seek every day for citizens and businesses’ indispensable help in this battle.

In the first place we will be seeking to report any unworthy behavior, action or approach of customs or taxes employees. You will have available addresses, phone numbers and social media communication channels to denounce through messages or pictures, or video any unworthy show including persons representing customs and tax administration. And for every case, we will give proper account, take appropriate measures and provide necessary public explanations.

You will have a detailed plan of the operation for each region or branch of your system, a determined timetable of actions for every employee and a table of expected scores that will be compared periodically with the results achieved, on which basis we will assess the work of each region and each individual.

On the other hand, in the context of the new legal measures that will be proposed to Parliament by the end of September, we will include the proposal to significantly increase penalty for those tax officials that will not report illegal trade activities for bribery.

In addition, we will make available to swindled consumers or businesses affected by unfair competition the appropriate channels of communication in order to inform us on any particular case of withholding of fiscal receipt or evasion of the obligation to pay taxes.

The victory of this battle is equal to tax cuts, salary increase and greater opportunities for more public investment to the benefit of the community.

Reducing informality to acceptable levels of a normal European country is equal to a new impetus to economic and social development of the country as never before.

But without doubt, the success in this battle is equal to a significant increase in the level of our social coexistence, as a country and as a people in the middle of Europe. Since our government announced before the holiday season the decision to open, starting from September, this new front of our joint effort for modernization and development in Albania, we have engaged on ground teams to test the field of the upcoming battle. Details of this test are as disturbing as encouraging for all of us, in the sense that the potential for success is very high.

Approximately one third of the businesses in our country are not registered at all, or have no cashboxes, or if there is any, they are used as worthless and unused furniture. So, not only do they violate the law, but they openly rob citizens and consumers.

One of the measures we will take is a public call, in addition to the obligation of every business to put a table where it is written that the customer has the right to not to pay unless he or she receives the coupon. In total, over 50% of the business almost do not provide any coupon, openly violating the law and any ethical norm in relation to consumers.

Therefore, today and in the coming days, all of you and I will continue to appeal on behalf of the Albanian government to every unregistered commercial businesses to hurry up and register. I congratulate those who have started to hurry up and increase the number of recordings in the National Registration Center. I urge others to register before the radical surgery to remove this intolerable disease starts. I urge them to put the cashboxes and have them at the customer service, before the operation starting in September brings them before the law. I urge them to stop giving their customers bills that have no legal and fiscal value, so that in dealing with the law they will not lose a lot more than they can gain by breaking the law.

I want to repeat it for all of you because I consider it a key word that should not be forgotten at any moment. We seek understanding and cooperation with the business; we do not seek fight against the business. We want to protect every customer by anyone who does not issue fiscal coupons for any kind of goods sold. We want to be next to any small or large business that pays taxes and is damaged by unfair competition. We gave time also to those shops and restaurants that were not operating regularly in order to enter the path of the law, because we do not want to use the force of law before the force of reason, taking into account that this disease has been in the body of the Albanian economy for over 20 years, and not just because of the business, but also because of a state that until two years ago would just stand by and watch.

While the work of customs and taxes carried out in these two years has laid a foundation on which we can continue with our feet on the ground an operation that would otherwise have failed. This disease is not new. Is has been eroding our national and household economy for many years, and this has happened, I repeat it, not only because of the business. But time is running out, and therefore we will repeat this appeal frequently until the start of the operation which will not stop before anybody for any reason, just like the ongoing power operation to thoroughly uproot any illegal connection and to complete the project of transformation of the energy sector, from a problematic sector that threatened to take the country into a deep energy and financial collapse, in a profitable sector for the country and for each families of this country.

I also want to make it very clear that this operation is not focused on the small ones, but it is first of all on the big ones. Therefore, preparations have started with the larg ones, following a very detailed analysis of the headquarters leading this battle. Oil, cigarettes, valuable goods and wholesale trade will be at the center of our frontal efforts. But without doubt the chain of informality has a beginning and an end.

We will check every link of the chain, from the largest to the smallest ones. I repeat it, from the largest to the smallest ones. From those threatening the foundations of free and fair competition of this country’s economy, to those who live by fooling customers on a daily basis in stores, restaurants and other retail points. One more thing, to conclude. To those asking why we did not do this operation since the beginning, I answer very simply: because those who for 23 years let the country down, at the edge of an abyss of debt and collapse of energy, made it impossible for us to deal earlier with this major battle which required a prepared field.

Today the field has been prepared and the seed of the culture of law, respect of law and conduct under the law of those who benefit whatsoever from their activity in the Republic of Albania, has already been planted.

We only need to go on cultivating this seed, because we are far from being a country where the law is equal for everyone. But even though you know well that this is the most difficult battle among those battles that we have started and that we are winning every day, it is also a battle for which we had to take mindful steps, with concrete results that have been actually achieved. Compared with the past, today these results speak for themselves even though they are insufficient compared to the future. These are the last weeks of appeals and measures taken by anyone who does not want to have problems with the law and the state.

I wish everybody success for the country’s sake, but also for your own sake. For, just as we have done with the power operation, considering the problem which is not outside of us, but it is and within us, and just as we have not been reluctant to punish corrupted managers and employees of the distribution system of the energy acting in concert on theft, we will not hesitate to punish anyone also within the system of customs and taxes of the Republic of Albania.