The Albanian Government aims to use artificial intelligence in several public administration processes to align certain legal and regulatory aspects of the Albanian framework with that of the European Union. The National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI) opened a tender on Thursday with a funding limit of 279 million lek or around 2.6 million euros with the subject “Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Process of Transposing the Acquis for European Integration”.

According to the procedure documents, “the general objective of this project is the implementation of AI technology in public institutions with the aim of accelerating the process of transposing EU acts. The provision of this service through the use of NLP (Natural Language Processing) capabilities will enable the automation, aggregation, selection of all acts/laws brought by the EU and access to these codes at any time and from any device by all actors involved in these processes”.

Specifically, according to AKSHI, this automation involves the addition of AI technology to public institutions for managing requests and providing desired information received from EU acts to all platform users throughout the duration of this project.

In essence, the aim of this initiative is to configure a platform for public institutions that deploys Artificial Intelligence to reduce the administrative burden of transposing EU legislation. Additionally, the use of AI in preparing acts for alignment, in the processes of grouping and categorizing Acquis acts/regulations, filtering information according to priority, and translating acts, is also included.

Another goal is to use AI to compare current Albanian legislation with that of the Acquis to identify: gaps, inconsistencies, and similarities, as well as to draft a legal intervention and/or alignment of policies in the Albanian system.

The reason for this initiative is linked to the fact that Albania needs to expedite the process of transposing the Acquis at this new stage while the volume of work remains high.

“The level of alignment of the EU Acquis in our legal system remains low, with the current speed for drafting alignment legislation close to more than 60 acts per year. Starting the negotiation process in July 2022, Albania needs to expedite the alignment process; therefore:

• There is a need for Albania to accelerate integration into the EU (especially to join the Single Market) – such a need can be supported by optimizing time and resources during the negotiation process.
• Albania may seek to adopt technological tools to reduce the administrative burden of transposing EU legislation in the Albanian context, etc.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a significant role in supporting the extension of the EU Acquis in Albania; Implementing an AI system would automate processes related to the drafting of legal acts related to it, such as assessing the impact of the EU Acquis, identifying gaps, analysis, and even providing some paralegal (drafting) and other supporting activities,” the document states.