HUB Monitor is one of the four pillars of the EU Policy Hub activities and its scope is to closely monitor EU integration process and the institutions involved, focusing primarily on inter-institutional coordination among domestic governmental institutional bodies and their legal documents and reports. The HUB Monitor issue briefs draw empirical evidence from legal documents and regular reports issued by the relevant institutions and the monitoring indicators abide by methodological guidelines which include but are not limited to the enacted regulatory and/or legislative acts; the activities performed (no. of meetings, action plans, reports, strategies to address EC Report shortcomings, etc.); the evolution stage of draft instruments; and the institutional and public scrutiny over results achieved.
Currently, EU Policy Hub members in cooperation with other experts and the support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Open Society Foundation Albania, have prepare a series of issue briefs discussing not only the institutional aspects of the process but also different policy sectors; presenting the current shortcomings but also providing recommendations to address the improvement of the structures and the legal acts.
In this Hub Monitor Issue, we focus on the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance and in some policy sectors. The first policy brief provides a critical assessment of the programming and implementation of IPA I funds in Albania, identifying key achievements, challenges, and potential discrepancies experienced during its implementation. The second policy brief focus on the justice reforms and the changing role of the executive. It portrays the shifts of competence toward the new judicial governance bodies, its expected role towards them and the challenges of inter-institutional cooperation, comparing it with similar regional practices in Serbia and in Montenegro. The third policy brief focus on the environmental policy sector and the challenges that Albania is facing in the implementation of the acquis for nature and biodiversity conservation providing recommendations in order to avoid every potential drawback to the country’s EU integration process. The fourth policy brief analyzes the legal and institutional framework of food safety and its challenges to alignment with EU acquis. We conclude this series of policy briefs, with an overall assessment of Albania’s progress toward EU membership, both in terms of institutional relations and the degree of fulfilling the European standards, arguing that Albania’s progress towards EU accession is not only laggard but also limited, mainly due to the country’s political polarization and its low administrative capacity.
You are kindly invited to read this Hub Monitor Issue Briefs for more detailed information and the concrete recommendations we propose for each specific issue. We hope that you will enjoy reading it and provide us with feedbacks for future Hub Monitor Issue Briefs.
Hub Monitor Team