Organized crime has emerged as one of the most important challenges to Albania throughout its transition to a free market liberal democracy. Largely unprepared to deal with this challenge during the 1990s, a more structured response begun to be outlined during the next decade. In 2008 Albania adopted the Intersectoral Strategy for Combating Organized Crime, Illicit Trafficking and Terrorism 2008-2013 followed by the Intersectoral Strategy for Combating Organized Crime, Illicit Trafficking and Terrorism 2013-2020.

The resilience of organised crime and its linkage to corruption were one of the main themes of the justice sector reform that led to the establishment of the Special Courts on Corruption and Organised Crime, the Special Prosecution, SPAK and the Bureau of Investigation in the next decade.
As such, the upcoming decade that will begin as of next month is set to begin with an improved and strengthened institutional framework and legislation which needs to be combined with a streamlined and improved strategic approach.

The year 2020 is also the last year of the implementation of Intersectoral Strategy for Combating Organized Crime, while a new strategic document is in the process of development and will be adopted soon.

In the framework of the project, Baseline Assessment of the Albanian Intersectoral Strategy on Countering Organised Crime 2013-2020, the Center for the Study of Democracy and Governance has prepared a assessment report on implementation of the strategy over the 2013 – 2019 period and has engaged with the relevant institution to improve monitoring and evaluation capacities and develop a new strategy based on the Europol threat assessment framework and the IPSIS methodology developed by the Albanian government.

According to the revised enlargement methodology, the effective fight against the organised crime will remain one of the key indicators for the progress in the EU accession process, therefore the success in the track records will need to be measurable.

Against this setting, this event aimed to serve as platform for governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to discuss on how to best combine the whole government and societal approach in the fight against organised crime and strengthening of the track records.