The roundtable “Protecting Human Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: EU and Albanian Legislative Approaches”, gathered MPs, government institutions, EU representatives, independent authorities, civil society, academia and digital governance experts to discuss how Albania can ensure a rights-based, EU-aligned approach to emerging technologies drawing from the finding of the policy document by SCiDEV and AHC. The event opened with the key message that AI use in the public sphere in Albania is advancing faster than the country’s legal and institutional capacities. Although AI is increasingly used in public administration, service delivery, and digital transformation, these developments are takin place in an ecosystem that does not employ the legal and ethical safeguards necessary to ensure transparency, accountability, and fundamental rights protection. This concern framed the presentation of the first national policy document on AI and human rights in Albania, produced jointly by AHC and SCiDEV, which aims to evaluate the current situation and offer alignment pathways with European standards.
Throughout the discussion, participants consistently stressed that AI without safeguards reinforces, rather than solves, existing structural problems. Discussions underscored risks such as algorithmic discrimination, opaque automated decision-making, gender bias in AI design, unchecked public-sector deployment, and the potential for surveillance and censorship practices to deepen. At the same time, several speakers highlighted the transformative benefits of AI—especially in public services, infrastructure, emergency response, and administrative efficiency—emphasising that Albania must not reject AI but govern it responsibly. The panels demonstrated broad agreement that Albania is in nascent phase of developing comprehensive mechanisms such as human-rights impact assessments, independent oversight, transparency obligations and harmonised legislation, all of which are essential preconditions for trustworthy and accountable AI systems. Contributions from AKSHI and the IDP provided key clarifications on ongoing reforms, open-data efforts, the new GDPR-aligned law, and the government’s consideration of signing the Council of Europe Convention on AI, confirming a key recommendation of the policy document.
The concluding argument of the roundtable was unequivocal: Albania is at a critical crossroad. Full alignment with the EU AI Act is not simply a formal accession requirement, it is an opportunity to build democratic resilience, strengthen public trust, protect civic space, and ensure that emerging technologies do not further erode rights or institutional credibility. Human oversight was identified as non-negotiable, and Parliament, independent bodies, civil society, media, academia and regulators must play a central role in monitoring and auditing AI systems. Participants agreed that Albania must adopt a coordinated, multi-stakeholder, inclusive, and rights-based approach to AI governance to ensure that digital transformation strengthens, rather than undermines, fundamental rights and democratic values.
This policy document represents the first comprehensive national analysis of its kind, combining AHC’s longstanding expertise in human rights with SCiDEV’s work on digital governance and artificial intelligence.
SCiDEV and AHC announced the development of a forthcoming Index on the Impact of AI on Human Rights in Albania, which will serve as a joint initiative to systematically track emerging risks and trends.
The event is the result of cooperation between the Center Science and Innovation for Development (SCiDEV) and the Albanian Helsinki Committee (AHC), and it is organized within the framework of the Civil Society Engagement in European Integration Program – Cluster 1 – with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Albania.