The Opening Session of the World Law Congress, which will be held next year in our country, began its proceedings today in Tirana.
This high level institutional event is organised by the World Jurist Association in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of Albania, with the participation of government representatives, international judges, leaders and representatives of the world’s leading legal and academic institutions, among them; the President of the World Jurist Association, Javier Cremades; former European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding; as well as global experts in the field of justice.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, who attended the event, addressed those present with a speech in which, among other things, he stressed that Albania had become the epicentre of an event with global prestige in the field of the rule of law because of what it has achieved over the last 10 years in relation to a historic and seemingly impossible challenge for many decades for the Albanian people: to build the conditions of a country governed by law and not by force.
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Opening remarks by Prime Minister Edi Rama at the Opening Session of the World Law Congress:
Honorable Minister of Justice of the French Republic, Mr. Darmanin, welcome to Tirana!
We are deeply grateful for your assistance with our difficult journey!
And as an expression of gratitude for everything that you, your government, and the President are doing to support the process of reform and the implementation of the Justice Reform, yesterday we had the pleasure of supporting the victory of Paris Saint-Germain, something we awaited together with great anticipation. So, if you want to win the final as well, come back to Tirana on 30 May.
Dear Javier, welcome to Tirana! It is an honor and a pleasure to have you here!
Now I would like to say a few words regarding this deeply moving moment, I would say, for Albania, which is becoming the epicenter of an event of global prestige in the field of the rule of law.
“A world governed by law, not by force” is the motto that has guided, since its founding in 1963, the World Jurist Association, created at a time of profound geopolitical tensions and developed as a platform of faith in the law and trust in the people of law.
Today, the World Law Congress is a globally recognized institution which, under the patronage of the King of Spain, Felipe II, and through the tireless work of the association, carries throughout the world the message of the very motive that gave birth to the association, the message of a world governed by law, not by force. And I do not believe there would be a single Albanian in this hall or outside this hall who would raise their hand if I were to ask: could you have imagined only a few years ago that the World Law Congress would be held in Tirana in 2027?
Naturally, no one would have imagined that Tirana, Albania, would be selected by this prestigious platform as the host country of this Congress, not because of its geographical position, not because of its climate or hospitality, but because of what Albania has achieved over the last decade in relation to a historic and seemingly impossible challenge for the Albanian people over many decades: to build, here in this country, precisely the conditions of a nation governed by law, not by force.
And while reflecting on this speech, which I felt it appropriate to share with you as a moment of reflection, I remembered when we conducted a public survey on the vetting process at the time we were conceiving and advancing the Justice Reform. It is widely known that vetting was a key point, a key point in which we were the first to believe, and afterwards we made every effort for those who today praise vetting as a turning point in the history of Albanian justice to believe in it as we did. And here I refer to all our valued partners on this journey, whose support has unquestionably been of primary importance.
And in that public survey we conducted at the time to measure the pulse of Albanian public opinion, we received two highly significant pieces of data, seemingly contradictory, but in substance entirely complementary.
More than 90 percent of Albanians strongly supported the vetting of judges and prosecutors. And you know very well, at least the Albanians present in this hall know very well, that bringing together 90 percent of Albanians around one issue is something extraordinarily rare. Even regarding the hour at which today’s meeting is taking place, I am convinced that if we held a secret vote here among Albanians, there would be disagreement over whether it is morning or afternoon.
And the second was the answer to the question: do you believe that during your lifetime in Albania you will witness the end of impunity and equality of people before the law? More than 80 percent did not believe so. So, more than 90 percent of Albanians wanted vetting to take place and strongly supported the Justice Reform because they were exhausted by a justice system entirely unequal in relation to the law and to them. But more than 80 percent of them had no faith that in their lifetime they would witness a shift of the power of justice towards equality before the law.
And truthfully, no one could blame all those who were so sceptical, because it was not only their daily reality over the years that proved to them that justice was an illusion in Albania, but also the history of the Albanian state itself since 1912, which proved only that the power of justice was in the hands of the fiercest forces of politics.
Democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, then once again freedom with shades of democracy, one thing remained unchanged: the sword of Lady Justice, which is inseparable from every small or large statue symbolizing justice, remained motionless in the office of the head of government.
And in 2013, we did what no one had dared to do before, by deciding something dramatic for people who represent political power, and political power in the majority: to hand over the sword to another force and create the conditions for another real power to emerge in this shared space among us, truly independent from political power.
In a widely discussed and continuously studied book co-authored by Nobel Prize winner Daron Acemoglu, entitled Why Nations Fail, there is, among others, the example of a country divided in two by the border between the United States and Mexico, as if a city were divided between Albania and one of its neighbors. The same people, the same traditions, the same customs, and two completely different realities.
On one side of the border, everything functions. On the other side of the border, nothing functions. On one side of the border there are kindergartens, schools, healthcare services and public calm. On the other side of the border there is crime, drugs, and everything else that follows. Why? The same people! Because on one side of the border the law prevails, guaranteed by institutions, while on the other side force prevails, and balances are guaranteed by forces above the law in the territory.
And this is precisely where the greatness, but also the difficulty, of our challenge lies. With this reform, which today is written in black and white on paper and has begun to produce tangible results, what must meanwhile be guaranteed is its longevity, not by individuals, but by institutions. The construction of the institutions envisioned in that reform is not a process that can be completed in one decade, nor even in two decades.
One decade has already passed, another decade has begun, and the process continues. But in the meantime, what must be guaranteed unwaveringly is that the process be supported at all costs by the forces capable of changing its course, which means by political power.
Naturally, if we stand too close to a great fresco, it becomes impossible to perceive its full complexity, and if we go too close to the wall, many things may seem out of place. Therefore, it is always necessary, although easier said than done, to maintain some distance in order to see a fresco that is being painted day after day by a very large number of forces within the space created by the Justice Reform.
The reason why this challenge is so extraordinary and so monumental in the history of our country is precisely because institution building is something entirely different from the efforts of politics, decision-making, representatives, and interest groups to conceive and implement a map of actions.
At the end of the day, there is one very simple truth: people cannot corrupt a system, whereas systems, if they are not built upon institutions that guarantee the rule of law, corrupt everyone.
I once gave an example, and I will repeat it here, regarding the implementation of seat belts in Albania. Wearing a seat belt in traffic was something extraordinarily difficult for Albanians to perceive, and it was a fact that distinguished Albanians here from Albanians in Germany.
No Albanian in Germany could imagine starting a car without putting on a seat belt, but very few Albanians could imagine returning from Germany and continuing to wear one here. And one day, a German ambassador told me: “It is astonishing that you Albanians do not learn even this quickly.” I told him: “Listen, you may not like hearing this, but I have seen employees of the German embassy in Albania without seat belts.”
And this is true because it is not the individual, not their nationality, not the history from which a people comes that determines the individual’s behavior in relation to the law. It is the system.
Germans in Albania even enjoyed not wearing seat belts. Albanians in Germany could not even imagine not wearing them. And this is the gap we must bridge through the Justice Reform and through institution building in general. The creation of a system that then makes arbitrariness impossible, which even today remains widespread throughout our state system, including the justice system itself, and makes the creation of different standards impossible in relation to the requirements of the law.
We are fully determined in this challenge not to allow any step backwards. We are in this challenge fully determined to make this process irreversible. And at this point there is something that is a very great guarantee for Albania and for Albanians. Two words: European Union.
If the European Union were not there, if Albanians did not desire the European Union so deeply, we would never succeed in building an independent justice system and establishing equality before the law. Or we would achieve as much as the Afghans or Iraqis achieved after the bombs and after the utopian efforts of the West and of NATO to bring democracy to those countries. And the difference between us and them is that we have the European Union; they do not.
The European Union is the greatest and only source in the world for learning how institutions are built. And the entire process of integration and negotiations is a process of transferring knowledge from Brussels here to Tirana. And this transfer of knowledge is a blessing because such knowledge cannot be created by a country through its own forces alone when it bears the burden of a history without a state and without institutions until very late, and then also the remainder of a history where the state and institutions were never positioned in service of creating equality before the law.
Therefore, I am fully convinced that this process will move forward as it should, with all its pain and all its costs, just as I am more determined than ever, together with the governing majority, not to allow what has been designed to be undermined and not to allow what has been built to be shaken, in terms of a new and independent justice system.
This is not the place to speak about the full complexity of this challenge, but it is the place to conclude this reflection with the belief that next year’s World Law Congress is a station towards which we must move with a purpose and with a programmed throughout the course of this year, in order to ensure that at that Congress Albania not only receives extraordinary recognition for what it has achieved so far, but also takes advantage of the presence of an exceptional number of people representing the world of the rule of law, to emerge with a renewed commitment towards the future.
Meanwhile, I sincerely hope that all the friends who have come here to Tirana, among whom I met several attending for the first time, will take the opportunity to enjoy Tirana, to enjoy Albania. And on the other hand, I assure them that we will shine in the organization of the Congress and will do everything necessary so that next year we will have new things to say and further progress achieved in relation to this monumental challenge and its extraordinary difficulty.
At the same time, I would like to take this opportunity to express my respect and gratitude to all representatives of the justice system present in this hall, assuring them that this governing majority will always be a reliable support for them, assuring them that they will never feel alone in this effort, but on the contrary, and certainly never under any kind of pressure other than the pressure of the public’s legitimate demand to implement the Reform in both spirit and letter, so that we may reach more quickly the destination which we will certainly reach together.
Thank you very much, my deepest respects!
