Three Sentences That Should Not Exist

SPAK’s 2025 Annual Report contains a passage with no legitimate place in a statutory accountability document. It deserves to be read closely.

By Ardit Rada (Tirana)

One hundred and twenty pages of record.

On page 11, under the heading “Problematikat dhe Sfidat” — Challenges to be Addressed — one passage stands apart from everything around it:

“Political and media rhetoric can influence public perception and institutional authority, and can serve as a driver for increasing the level of threats from organized crime. SPAK would consider particularly alarming those initiatives or measures of a legal or institutional character that would aim at limiting its procedural tools and its independence. Such interventions would constitute a serious risk to SPAK’s constitutional function and to the rule of law itself.”

The rest of the report accounts for what SPAK has done. These three sentences tell other institutions what they may not do. They have no basis in the report’s statutory mandate. They are not operational findings, legal analysis, or institutional requests. They are a political statement — placed in a constitutional document, addressed to the body responsible for overseeing SPAK, warning that body against acting. That is worth examining closely.

The Logical Structure Is Authoritarian
Strip the bureaucratic language and the argument reads as follows: criticism of SPAK by politicians and journalists strengthens organized crime; legislative attempts to constrain SPAK threaten the rule of law; therefore, both criticism and legislative oversight endanger the state.

This is not a legal argument. It is a power argument. It is the same argument made by every institution in history that has sought to immunize itself from democratic control — that its work is so vital, its enemies so dangerous, that normal rules of accountability must bend around it. The logic is self-sealing: the more powerful SPAK becomes, the more dangerous it is to question SPAK, because questioning SPAK empowers its enemies. There is no external check on this reasoning. There is no point at which SPAK’s own behavior could, by this logic, justify scrutiny. The institution has written itself a blank check and signed it with the rule of law’s name.

This structure — we are the guardians, therefore guarding us from oversight is itself guarding the state — is not the reasoning of a democratic institution. It is the reasoning of an unaccountable one that has begun to believe its own mythology.

The Equation of SPAK With the Rule of Law Is the Tell
The final sentence is the most dangerous. “Such interventions would constitute a serious risk to SPAK’s constitutional function and to the rule of law itself.”

Note the construction. Not: “a risk to SPAK’s ability to function.” Not: “a risk to ongoing investigations.” Not even: “a risk to anti-corruption efforts.” SPAK says interventions would threaten the rule of law itself. SPAK and the rule of law have been made synonymous. To constrain SPAK is to destroy the rule of law. To criticize SPAK is to weaken the state against criminals.

This is an extraordinary claim. The rule of law is not an institution. It is a principle — the principle that power is exercised according to known, applied, equally enforced rules, including rules that bind the powerful. The rule of law includes the rule that prosecutors are accountable. It includes the rule that parliaments make laws. It includes the rule that courts — not prosecution offices — determine the boundaries of legislative competence. When a prosecution body declares itself coextensive with the rule of law, it has not defended that principle. It has inverted it.

The rule of law constrains SPAK. SPAK does not constitute the rule of law. These are not the same thing, and confusing them — or strategically presenting them as the same thing — is precisely the intellectual move that authoritarian institutions make. They do not typically announce their authoritarianism. They announce their indispensability.

The Chilling Effect Framing Is Manipulative
The first sentence chains political and media commentary to organized crime threats in a single causal sequence. This is not analysis. It is intimidation dressed as risk assessment.

Consider what it actually says: if a journalist investigates SPAK, or a politician criticizes a SPAK decision, or a parliamentarian proposes reform of SPAK’s enabling law, they may be contributing to conditions that embolden organized crime to threaten SPAK’s staff. The institution has created a framework in which any external voice — press, opposition, civil society — can be framed as objectively serving criminal interests.

This is a technique. It is well documented. It is used by governments to suppress press freedom (“reporting on security operations aids the enemy”), by intelligence agencies to resist oversight (“revealing our methods helps terrorists”), and by corrupt officials to deflect accountability (“this investigation is politically motivated”). The fact that SPAK — an anti-corruption institution — is deploying this technique in a statutory report should give every serious observer pause. The technique does not become legitimate because the institution using it has a good mandate. It becomes more alarming.

A genuinely independent prosecutor’s office does not need to preemptively delegitimize its critics. Its independence is demonstrated by its results and constrained by law, not protected by declarations that critics are dangerous.

Parliament Is Being Told What It May Not Do
This is the constitutional violation hiding in plain sight. SPAK submits this report to parliament, under constitutional obligation, as an accountability mechanism. Parliament is the institution that enacted the law creating SPAK. Parliament is the institution with the democratic mandate to amend that law. And SPAK has used its statutory report — the instrument of its own accountability to parliament — to warn parliament that amending its enabling legislation would threaten the rule of law.

The accountability instrument has been turned into a political shield. The report that is supposed to say here is what we did and how we did it, judge us instead says here is what you may not do to us, and here is the constitutional language we will use to resist it.

This is an institutional power grab executed in the most sophisticated possible way: not through a press conference, not through a political statement, not through a constitutional challenge — but through the quiet insertion of three sentences into a document that almost nobody reads in full, in a language accessible to a small audience, buried on page 11 between operational challenges and EU recommendations. It will be cited. It will be referenced. It is now on the record as SPAK’s official institutional position. That is precisely why it is there.

The Irony Is Total
SPAK exists because Albanian institutions spent decades placing themselves above accountability. The entire justice reform that created SPAK — the vetting process, the special courts, the new prosecution structure — was built on the diagnosis that entrenched institutional actors had used legal language and procedural complexity to insulate themselves from democratic control and criminal prosecution.

SPAK’s founding logic is that no institution is above the law.

The passage in question asserts, in a statutory document, that SPAK is effectively above criticism, above certain categories of legislation, and coextensive with the rule of law itself.

The institution created to end institutional impunity has, in three sentences, begun constructing its own.

What Should Have Been Written Instead
An accountability report from a genuinely independent prosecution body would say: here are our results; here are our failures; here are the legal gaps that constrain us; here is what we are asking parliament to fix; judge us. It would not say: here is what we would consider alarming if you attempted it. The first posture is democratic. The second is not.

The passage is not a legal analysis. It is not an operational concern. It is a political statement, laundered through institutional language, placed in a constitutional document, addressed to the body that is supposed to hold SPAK accountable, warning that body not to act.

That is what it is. Call it that.

About the Author
Ardit Rada is a Tirana-based journalist covering Albanian politics, governance, and institutional developments. His work focuses on the intersection of domestic political dynamics and Albania’s European trajectory.