Alastair Campbell's diary: The corrupt state desperate for EU membership

New European

7 days ago

The celebrations were barely over when Rama took the chair to host the recent European Political Community Summit in Tirana, truly a sign Albania had arrived on the international stage. Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer, Recep TayyipErdoğan, Volodymyr Zelensky, Giorgia Meloni, Ursula von der Leyen … all the European big guns turned out in a country most had shunned for decades. Indeed, Starmer was the first serving UK PM ever to visit.
I have been visiting Albania regularly for 14 years. This enduring relationship began when then-opposition leader Edi Rama, fresh from losing an election he said had been rigged, asked me to help devise his strategy for the next one when it came. He won it, with a landslide, to become prime minister in 2013. Fast-forward to May 2025, and he has just won his fourth term in power, a stunning achievement for any leader in the modern democratic world.
At six feet seven inches tall Rama towered, both physically and politically, over the event. His and his country's confidence were on show. The 47 European leaders arrived into the fastest-growing airport in Europe. They were greeted with an AI film in which they (as children), one by one, said 'welcome to Albania'. Even Erdoğan laughed.
The purpose-built venue was decorated with wallpaper made from the feltpen doodles that Rama, an artist before he entered politics, does while working. One of them, I am happy to say, is of me, riding a horse into battle, a sword in one hand, a phone in the other.
The entire event sent a clear message: Albania is no longer merely asking for a seat at the table; it is ready to help build it. The prospect of EU membership by 2030 is real and it matters, not just for Albania, but for Europe, because enlargement brings with it greater security and deeper cooperation against instability in the Western Balkans and the malign force of Russian aggression.
But EU membership isn't granted on ambition alone. It is earned through democratic values, reforms, and above all, through the rule of law. And herein lies a tension. In recent years, Albania has made real progress on justice reform, essential to repair the damage done to its reputation by corruption.
The establishment of SPAK – the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organised Crime – was a landmark step. It was set up with support from the EU and the US and, operating independently from government, it has delivered dramatic results: senior officials, ministers and MPs have been among those prosecuted. Corruption, it has made clear, is no longer consequence-free.
But with power comes responsibility; and with judicial power comes an even greater burden – to act fairly, proportionately, and with transparency. That's why what's happening to Tirana's mayor, Erion Veliaj, should worry us all.
I have known Veliaj as long as I have known Rama. A Socialist Party colleague and former staffer for Rama, he is widely seen as a possible successor. According to SPAK, he has been running a complex bribery and money-laundering scheme through a network of NGOs and companies controlled by his wife and brother. If true, that is scandalous, and he deserves to be punished.
There is a big IF, however. For he has now been held in detention for over 100 days with no charges, nor knowing what the charges are likely to be, while remaining as mayor and expected to run the capital. All this from SPAK – the very institution meant to defend the rule of law, not compromise it. Judicial reform cannot become judicial overreach. Anti-corruption efforts cannot become a cover for arbitrary action.
The EU should not be turning a blind eye. Because if the process of accession is to mean anything, it must uphold the very values the Union is built on: due process, judicial integrity, human rights. No official, no matter how high-ranking, should be immune from investigation into wrongdoing. But no citizen, however high-profile, should be detained without charge or due process. Not in a democracy. Not in a country on the path to Europe.
What we saw at the EPC Summit was a country setting out its European credentials with real verve. But Albania's place in the EU will be secured not by optics or rousing speeches, but by the substance of its democratic credentials; right now, those are being tested.
It's time for clarity. From Brussels. From member states. From all who care about Europe's future. Arbitrary detention has no place in a European democracy. And if Albania is to be part of the EU club – a goal it has every right to pursue – both it, and the bodies responsible for its process of modernisation and accession, must play by the rules of that club, not just its politics. Because in the end, rule of law isn't just a box to tick. It's the foundation for everything else.
'Never go to bed without knowing something you didn't know when you got up in the morning.' One of my little life rules, to keep me curious and keen to keep learning. And the thing I learned last Tuesday, speaking at an event in Leeds Civic Chambers, is that 900,000 children in England live in what is called 'bed poverty'.
Also speaking was Bex Wilson, deputy head at a primary school in a deprived area of Leeds, who told the story of a conversation with an 11-year-old boy she was teaching. He was not his usual self, so she asked him if he was tired. 'Miss, I am always tired,' he replied. 'I don't have a bed.'
I love stories of people who get good out of bad. That boy now has a bed, thanks to his teacher badgering a bed manufacturer. And Bex, a real force of nature, has founded a charity, Zarach, with the goal of ensuring all children have a bed to sleep in. It's terrible that we even need it, in Britain 2025. But with more than four million British children growing up in poverty, sadly, we do. Check out Zarach.org.
I was in Leeds to host a panel the following morning at a huge event called UKREiiF, the UK's Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum, attended by 16,000 people. I kicked off by asking for a show of hands on whether Labour's pledge to build 1.5m homes in this parliamentary term would be met.
Of the several hundred people packed into our discussion on housing, not a single person (bar a civil servant at the front who probably felt he had to) raised their hand. The general view was that they would be lucky to get halfway there. Worrying.
In for a penny, in for a pound, I ended up doing five events at the Hay Literary Festival, including interviews with Donald Trump's former spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, and Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, murder victim of Vladimir Putin's regime. The first was great fun, the second deeply moving, with standing ovations for her courage at both start and finish.
I also really enjoyed the session with students from Welsh state schools who were lively, boisterous, passionate and, in the case of those who volunteered to come up on stage and make speeches they were not expecting to make in front of 1,500 teenagers, absolutely brilliant. Labour are committed to lowering the voting age to 16. I would go even lower.