On April 5th 2022, a workshop session was organised in the framework of the Jean Monnet Chair project (OwnEU) at the Institute of European Studies. The main topic of the event was the relevance of public funding and corruption for Albania, in the context of the EU accession process. Keynote speaker of the activity was be Professor Iain McMenamin, from the Dublin City University, Ireland.
In the first part of the workshop, the project chair introduced the general overview of the political criteria for EU accession. In the second part, Professor McMenamin presented findings from his latest research, focusing on public funding and how it affects corruption. In his remarks, he concluded that public funding probably reduces corruption under some circumstances, but we are not sure what those conditions are. Public funding is inexpensive and worth supporting for good democratic reasons, independent of corruption control. The above conclusions and propositions were discussed using original data on public funding, placing Albania in comparative context. Questions and discussion from participants followed, and the main focus of this section was trying to understand more in-depth the ramification of corruption on other areas, such as human rights, lobbying, etc.
