The biggest challenge is the fight against corruption and putting faith in human morality. Support and encouragement for righteous and honest people.

Sherif Bundo  

Albania has recently opened negotiations for the EU membership process. But the start of the process puts our country in front of even more subtle challenges than the political decision to start it. Below I am listing some of the problems that we need to solve.

First, it is the challenge of overcoming oneself, the challenge of accepting others as partners with oneself, the challenge of being ready to give and accept consensus, to cooperate in a group with other countries, unlike the history of temporary alliances of until now. The European Union is a community where the status of each country places it equal to other countries, regardless of the decision-making criteria that respect the population and the role of each country in the Gross Domestic Product of the EU.

The challenge of respecting cultures and the coexistence of communities in harmony. Over the centuries, Albanians have not conquered, they have not attacked others, they have silently accepted the verdict of the great. But this requires the ability to create a fraternal climate with all minorities and abandon nationalisms.

The challenge of respecting institutions and returning public trust to them. From blind obedience to the state for 50 years, the population has passed for many years into a kind of anarchy that encouraged kiosks, illegal constructions, political privatizations, waste of land, and other phenomena that cost the Albanian economy and society. Belief in the free vote as the supreme institution and the inviolability of the vote.

The challenge of getting people back to work, supporting well-being in a work-as-lifestyle mentality.

The challenge of caring for the environment, abandoning the behavior with two standards, different inside and different outside, in orderly families, in dirty public environments. We are on the verge of an irreversible environmental destruction and a terrible pollution.

Aids of economic development, among which the promotion of free initiative, respect for entrepreneurship and abandoning the practice of returning businesses as satellites of public authorities. Equality before the law and the fight against clientelism.

The biggest challenge is the fight against corruption and putting faith in human morality. Support and encouragement for righteous and honest people.

The challenge of separating administration from politics, of its abuse, of even criminal treatment of administration from politics, a practice that continues even after 30 years of democracy.

The challenge of professional and independent justice. Above all, justice needs to regain the lost confidence that it is truly capable of delivering justice. The justice reform launched in 2016 is still not bearing the fruits expected by Albanian public opinion.

The challenge of another culture in public services, education, health, abandoning formalism, mediocrity and promoting skilled professionals. Strong control over users of public funds.

The challenge of shared responsibility arising from community coexistence. A culture of local and national referendums on vitally important issues should be encouraged, where the individual feels valued and makes a direct contribution.

Support and creation of a civil society, truly emancipated, with a strong voice, influential, imposing, and sutorite.

The challenge of curbing immigration and the rapid, artificial aging of the population due to strong and prolonged immigration.

The challenge of revitalizing the village, of integrating the village into the market, of curbing mass depopulation accompanied by extreme social and economic phenomena and the extreme impoverishment of the population that is forced to stay in the village.

 

Sherif Bundo is a professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tirana, a former politician