Albania’s 2024 Anti-Informality Campaign: Digital shift, real impact or missed opportunity?

One year after Albania launched its most technologically ambitious campaign to combat informality, the results are in — and they paint a mixed picture of progress, persistence, and the deep-rooted challenges of formalizing an uneven economy.

🔍 Key Achievements in 2024

💻 Digital Leap Forward
The rollout of real-time e-invoicing and automated tax monitoring marked a structural shift. Over 92% of VAT-registered businesses began using e-invoicing platforms by end-2024, increasing transactional transparency.
📡 Cross-institutional data integration also allowed for the first time automated alerts on wage inconsistencies, prompting over 13,000 corrections in declared wages.

📊 Increased Formal Revenue
Tax revenues grew by 6.7%, according to the Ministry of Finance, attributed partly to the broadened formal tax base and increased compliance in urban areas and high-cash sectors like construction and retail.

📢 Public Engagement Rose
With over 3,000 outreach events and public campaigns, formalization became a public conversation. Media messaging focused on “benefits over burdens” — better services in exchange for tax compliance.

🌍 EU Alignment Accelerated
The campaign was praised in the 2024 EU Progress Report, citing Albania’s “notable improvements in fiscal transparency.” The system was benchmarked against Croatia’s e-invoicing model and received technical backing from EU and OECD advisors.

⚠️ But Challenges Persisted

🔒 Enforcement Still Weak
Despite the digital upgrades, ground-level enforcement lagged. The number of fiscal audits dropped due to capacity issues, and many cases flagged by the system weren’t followed up. Only 1 in 4 flagged wage discrepancies were investigated.

🕳️ Corruption & Patronage Loopholes
Insiders and watchdogs alike noted that certain politically connected businesses continued to avoid compliance. Transparency International’s 2024 index still ranked Albania at rank 98 globally, with minimal improvement.

📉 Rural & Informal Sectors Lagging
Informality in agriculture and micro-enterprises remains high. Many small firms either lacked digital capacity or avoided the system altogether. Resistance stemmed from fear of audits, high social contributions, and a lack of administrative support.

🧮 Final thought: Reform in Motion, but not yet Transformation

Albania’s 2024 anti-informality campaign was a step in the right direction, particularly in urban digital compliance, but underlying structural issues — weak enforcement, corruption, and SME resistance — still obstruct deep reform.

Experts say 2025 will be crucial for institutionalizing digital oversight and ensuring equal application of the law. Whether this was a genuine shift or pre-election showmanship remains a question, but the groundwork has been laid. The challenge now is consistency.