Task-Force for illegal constructions

The opposition Parliament Members attended a hearing session with the Minister of Urban Development, Eglantina Gjermeni, a meeting focusing on the “unification of competences of the National Urban Construction Inspectorate in the territory and areas of national importance”. The opposition Parliament Members asked explanations about the role of the Task-Force established by the government for demolishing the illegal constructions.

Minister Gjermeni declared that this decision is in full accordance with the Constitution and the law for construction inspection. According to the opposition, the Council of Ministers decision was anti-constitutional, since it gives Court competences to the government.

“This activity is structured and coordinated through a task force. Keeping in mind a concrete map of the National Agency of Territory Planning, from the Agency of Legalisation Urbanisation and Integration of Informal Zone/Building, and from the National Urban Construction Inspectorate. The agencies coordinate their work for the informal constructions and their location before making a real intervention”, Gjermeni declared.

“You are taking competences that belong to a court, and this is dangerous. It is not dangerous because you are the Minister, but the tendency is dangerous. If the executive branch decides to do the court, than we have returned in 1945. You expressed a sentence here which is terrible. You said that the task-force will decide if the construction is legal or illegal. What is this task force? The task force is not the special court of 1944 to decide to their liking without asking questions. We have a legal structure that brings us to the court”, declared the Democratic Party Parliament Member, Sokol Olldashi.

“No individual rights or the rule of law has been infringed. Certainly that every individual has the administrative right to complain and follow the legal procedures through courts. Everything has been made with this decision of the Council of Ministers, which is completely based on the Constitution and the laws in effect. This is not a new law, and nothing new has been invented here”, Gjermeni declared.

“This normative act goes against the Constitution. It violates the right and guarantee for special protection that our Constitution provides, a right that the Constitution of a state that respects the rule of law gives for properties. Intervening to legally built constructions, or those that you bring as a novelty, you have in fact intervened with the protection that is made to this property by the Constitution”, declared the Democratic Party Parliament Member, Genc Ruli.

The hearing session spurred harsh debates between the Parliament Members, and the opposition asked the government to withdraw this decision that, according to them, would make the Albanian citizen address to the European Court, causing damages for the country.