The German friend who came to dictate to Albanians the other democracy

By Ardit Rada

A German politician came to Tirana this week and explained Albania to the Albanians. Anton Hofreiter chairs the Bundestag’s Committee on European Affairs. He told Deutsche Welle that our government and parliament still have a lot of work to do and that our politicians should not give arguments to those who want to keep Albania out of the European Union.

Then it was SPAK’s turn. No one from politics should interfere with it, the Albanian edition of DW quotes, “not even verbally”.

In fact, there is a politician who has interfered verbally in the affairs of justice: on 31 July 2015, the Federal Prosecutor General of Germany was investigating two journalists of the Netzpolitik blog for treason against the state. The investigation was under way. The head of the Greens’ parliamentary group in the Bundestag called it, for the Rheinische Post newspaper, “incredible, cynical and harmful to democracy”. Four days later, the Minister of Justice retired the prosecutor. Six days after that, the case was closed. That politician was precisely Anton Hofreiter. And he was right. A prosecutor can destroy a person’s life before any judge has spoken. And an elected representative, say an MP or a mayor, should be able to say this out loud.

So what changed from Berlin to Tirana? The principle or the place? Surely the place. German law even allows the Minister of Justice to give instructions to prosecutors. In 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union itself ruled that German prosecutors are too dependent on ministers to issue a European arrest warrant. A German minister can give orders to a prosecutor’s office. An Albanian MP cannot even express an opinion, otherwise it is called interference in justice…

Every Albanian knows this scene: a friend comes to your house and gives you advice, until he judges your family too. He even tells you that the whole house needs fixing. Then he points at the guard at the door and says that no one in the house should say a single word about him.

This is the Albania hidden behind the phrase “not even verbally”. The government is tainted. Parliament is tainted. So are the parties, the ministries, the press and, who knows, even the man selling corn in front of Parliament. Only one institution is clean, and it happens to be precisely the one our friends have supported. The clean one must be protected from the tainted, even from their voice.

SPAK can inspect a ministry, seize a phone and request that a person be jailed before the trial has even begun. In February 2025, a judge of the Constitutional Court was kept under surveillance for fifteen days, with only a prosecutor’s signature, without authorisation being sought from any court. We Albanians gave it this power. Parliament included SPAK in the Constitution in 2016, with the unanimity of 140 votes. And yes! Foreigners helped, and we know it. We were here.

Now the parliament that created it is told to keep silent about it. And the government too. Power over everyone and criticism from no one. This way of exercising power has a name in the theory of political systems, and it is called tyranny. Mr Hofreiter is asking a country to surrender before one of its own institutions.

The Assembly has not surrendered. In July it sent SPAK 32 recommendations. One of them, on the manner of appointing the head of the investigation, was made at the request of the European Union itself. But according to Mr Hofreiter’s rules, this was interference.

He says Albania can close the negotiation chapters in 2027. This will have to be done by the “tainted” parliament and government, because a prosecutor’s office cannot sign the accession treaty. While populists say that Albanian institutions cannot be trusted. The German friend in fact says the same thing, but with one exception.

We have deserved part of this. For more than 30 years, Albanian politicians have gone from one embassy to another calling each other thieves. Foreign friends believed them. Now they believe the institution they supported more than the country surrounding it.

When asked about a protest, Hofreiter replied with a plea: “Please respect the rule of law”. For “all politicians” in Albania he had one instruction: to do their work as well as they can. He calls himself a friend of Albania, and friends of this kind always know things better. They come by plane, receive a briefing on the situation and leave after grading a country, as if it were a school assignment. In his own country, Mr Hofreiter is an opposition MP among 630 MPs. In Tirana, he is Europe. This is the absurdity of a political class that imposes on candidate countries rules it would laugh at in its own home.

The Balkans know this tone. In Bosnia and in Kosovo, international missions divided local institutions into those they trusted, those they tolerated and those they supervised. Mr Hofreiter spoke in Tirana like a mission chief. In a protectorate, this is how one governs. Albania is a NATO member and is negotiating European Union membership.

SPAK should prosecute every minister and every MP against whom it can prove the charges. And no government should ever be able to open or close a file. Meanwhile, we Albanians will continue to talk about it. Some of what will be said will be wrong. Some will come from people who fear prison. They too have the right to speak. Mr Hofreiter exercised this right in 2015.

In his own home, he practises democracy. In ours, he has no right to ask us to obey blindly.

Tirana Examiner