After the bipartisan parliamentary commission for administrative-territorial reform closed without any result, the Socialist Party pulled a draft law out of its sleeve on Thursday for changing the country’s territorial map, proposing to reduce the number of municipalities from 61 to 46.
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The new map was preceded by an analytical document with several scenarios, also prepared unilaterally by the Socialist Party. Despite the opposition’s objections, one of the country’s key reforms is heading towards approval as a unilateral choice of the ruling party.
For the opposition Democratic Party, the reform hid electoral aims.
“The attempt to carry out a new unilateral reform hid electoral aims of the majority and not an analysis of the responsibilities, functions, and financial problems of local governance,” Democratic Party MP Jorida Tabaku told BIRN.
To support this argument, Tabaku uses the merger of Rrogozhina with Kavaja as an example, which according to her aims to dismantle the Democratic Party’s victory in Kavaja and has no other justifiable criteria.
According to Tabaku, the bipartisan commission should have first identified the problems of the 2014 reform and then, consensually, proposed solutions for them based on counties. Meanwhile, the commission failed to hold all hearings with citizens and local actors, leaving out Tirana, the country’s largest municipality, from these hearings.
“We are faced with a unilateral reform, a reform not based on criteria, which does not change the status quo, and does not improve the problems of the 2014 reform,” Tabaku emphasized.
The same concern is shared by civil society experts who have been engaged for years in analyzing local government issues. They see that the SP’s analysis focuses on the territorial map, without considering the most important element, which is the violation of local autonomy and the centralization of functions.
“The essence of the reform is not the number of municipalities that can be merged or created. It is the concept of separation of powers and the connection between the state and the citizen, access to public services, and the way local governance is realized in representation, administration, and management. The reform should be: what kind of governance do we want, not what map do we want,” said Afrim Krasniqi, executive director of the Institute of Political Studies.
According to him, legislation on local government has been continuously misinterpreted, while the central government has not shown political will to implement the principles of autonomy and decentralization in practice. As an example, Krasniqi mentions the case of Zvërnec, where, according to him, local institutions had no real role in decision-making.
Even for Agron Haxhimali, who heads the Institute of Municipalities and provides expertise to the parliamentary commission, the majority chose the easiest path: to change the map but not the governance model.
“The proposed mergers almost naturally follow the boundaries of the former districts; this should be seen as a positive tradition by restoring a recognized territorial configuration, without demonstrating how this change will improve democratic representation, service quality, or local autonomy,” Haxhimali told BIRN.
The merger of 15 municipalities, Haxhimali suggests, constitutes an intervention in administrative boundaries, but not a genuine reform of local governance, as it leaves untouched the fundamental challenges of decentralization, financing, representation, and service delivery to citizens, for which there will be a second phase.
“The problems that citizens experience today at the local level, especially the lack of effective representation, distance from decision-making, and insufficient access to services, are not solved simply by merging some municipalities,” he added.
The challenge of decentralization
The SP’s legal initiative proposes only an administrative reorganization and does not foresee provisions that touch on legal competencies or address issues of local autonomy.
For local governance experts, this initiative leaves out of the debate the main issue that has hindered local government functioning over the last decade: the unfinished decentralization of competencies and finances.
From this perspective, Afrim Krasniqi argues that the majority has not answered a fundamental element: “Is the central government ready to give competencies to local governance?”
One of the reasons the last reform failed, according to him, is that “the central government took the competencies and turned local governance into an appendix, a subordinate, and not a partner in co-governance.”
As an example, he brings up instances when the Prime Minister asks mayors to make decisions on matters that belong to local authorities.
Consequently, he assesses that the SP’s reform focuses more on electoral effects and territorial developments than on the quality of public services, economic development, and citizen benefits.
The lack of this vision, Krasniqi further states, “accompanied by limited public consultation, also explains the skepticism of international partners, who, unlike in the 2014 reform, have maintained a more withdrawn role in the process.”
Haxhimali also believes that the SP’s legal proposal has not addressed the main challenge of local government, which according to him is not the territorial map, but the governance model to be built and its proximity to citizens.
“The solution requires systemic and integrated interventions in the entire architecture of local governance: in territorial and administrative organization, in the financing and fiscal decentralization system, in the division of competencies, as well as in the system of representation and local elections.”
According to him, the reform should review the entire model of local government organization, addressing both municipalities and counties in an integrated manner, with clearly defined roles, functions, and financial resources.
He assesses that the problems created after the 2014 reform are related to the distancing of power from citizens, the weakening of community representation, and inequalities in service access, but emphasizes that not every municipal problem is a consequence of territorial division.
“First, the reform criteria should be defined, and only then should the map be constructed, not the other way around,” he suggested.
Similar conclusions are reached by reports from organizations that have monitored the implementation of the territorial reform over the last decade, which demand that the new reform not focus on the number of municipalities but on improving local governance./ BIRN
