The Importance of E-Governance in Furthering Albania’s Development and EU Enlargement Perspective

With the latest fast technology developments many EU and other countries, including Albania, are focusing more and more on means how to contribute to rule of law improvement through access to information, civic engagement and communication technology, with e-government being the prime example of that method. In the case of Albania, e - government has certainly brought a lot of identified benefits to citizens, among which enhancing transparency and faster service. Nonetheless, considering this project can still be considered at early stages of development, there are few remaining measured implementing challenges that need to be analyzed further. Potential remaining impediments may be linked to public participation, information sharing, active civic engagement, socio-economic and cultural democracy constraints, etc. We value that it is important to discuss these situations in detail, in order to ensure further successful application of quality e-services. Therefore, the scope of this submission is to discuss the proven benefits and few potential implementation challenges of e-government service in Albania, as this tool is vastly becoming a global definition for transforming the way civic engagement and public service work. We also aim to provide some suggestions on how the use of e-government in Albania can be potentially used as a rule of law and anti-corruption instrument for its path towards EU integration, and to create Albanian active citizen of the future. As most of us are aware, there has been a lot of discussion regarding the issue of Albania’s accession to the European Union. The Western Balkans countries’ - Albania included – have had a challenging road towards the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in general. In February 2020, the new enlargement methodology for the WB was published by the Commission. The new methodology promotes the merit-based approach and brings a new conditionality to light - negotiations can be put on hold in certain areas, or in the most serious cases, suspended overall, in case of progress reassessment of WB countries. In that context, will the EU learn from past mistakes and guarantee a credible acceleration in the process of Albania’s future membership? The current state of play on Albania’s path to the European Union will be discussed in detail in the second half of this paper.