Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tirana invited in “Tonight Ilva Tare” program speaks on the EU presidency and the country’s integration process
Invited on the “Tonight Ilva Tare” TV program, Mrs. Dewi van de Weerd, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Albania, whose country holds the EU Presidency during these six months, said that non approval of the justice system reform means great sufferings for Albanian people and obstacles standing in the way of the country’s integration process.
However, dedicated people are working hard for this reform and according to the Ambassador finding a consensus to adopt this reform will be a turning point for the Albanian politics.
As regards the fight against corruption and organized crime, the Ambassador said that she was surprised by the fact that the chief prosecutor reorganized anti-corruption structure, given that it is one of the priorities for Albania.
Albanian asylum seekers in the Netherlands have 0% chance to obtain asylum and according to the Ambassador all the Albanians should try to build the future in their own country.
She further underlined, that as holder of the rotating EU presidency, the Netherlands will play the role of impartial mediator with Albania and that Albania should focus more on the work than on words.
In Tonight Ilva Tare television program in Ora News, there were also presented several programs supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, including the AIS organization’s program titled Money, Government and Politics. This program aims at creating tools for civil transparency and control over government with the aim to empower citizen’s participation and reaction.
Nori Spauwen is a junior diplomat who works for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She specializes in Human Rights and Strenghtening Civil Society and is in Albania for a month to help set up a DiploHack. Nori has a background as an advocate for LGBT rights at the UN and holds a Master degree in Political Philosophy. She lives in Amsterdam and works in The Hague.
Rron is currently doing a master in International Relations at Leiden University and is writing his thesis on Albania’s potential as a regional peace builder in the Balkans.
Besjana Hysa has been working for almost 4 years on promoting Transparency through Data by monitoring and analyzing the information on everything related to public expenditures in Albania and implementing digital platforms that provide information to citizens. She is currently involved in the following project: “Money, Government and Politics” project for publishing data about assets, incomes and expenditures declared by high level officials in politics and judiciary system, Electoral Spending project that contains data and analyses on electoral campaign expenditures.
Shefiko Hajna is a Software Developer for several projects such as: Open Spending, Open Data and Za’Lart. She holds a Master Degree in System of Information in Economy, Faculty of Economics at the University of Tirana.
Erald Hoxhabis an Open Data Journalist working in Albanian Institute of Science projects that have generated substantial results in terms of transparency, information, accountability and good governance. His work consist in providing the public with Transparency and civic participation through the open source platform Raised Voices Albania (Za’Lart), where citizens had the opportunity to denounce cases of vote manipulation, misuse of public administration or children, and other electoral distortions.
Co-founder of Garazh, a newly organization, with the object to help, and acceleration innovation in Albania and in the region. Ergest has an experience of more than 10 years in the technology sector with strong expertise in Project Management, Information security, Business Process Management and IT management. He hold a MSc in software engineer. During the last two year, he is deeply involved in the innovation sector in Tirana, organizing Startup Weekend Tirana for three times in raw and the first HackDay Albania, mentoring different startup and also giving presentation, motivation speech and moderating different events in the innovation sector. He also was recognized for the startup weekend Tirana as Best Innovative Program for 2014 by Infocom Albania.
