New territorial division
28/04/2014

The regulation of the Territorial Reform Commission was changed by the Parliament. In the first meeting after the changes, the Minister of Local Government was summoned in a session by some Parliament Members. During this meeting, the Commission passed the criteria on which will be realized the new territorial division of local governments.

The basic criteria is the creation of functional units with not less than 30.000 residents.

“We propose to deepen the application of the criteria for deciding functional areas that in the future might become the new territorial administration units. A functional area should not be bigger than the district. Within the district we may see how many functional areas we might have”, declared Bledi Cuci, Minister of Local Government.

Only the minority communes will be excluded from the criteria, which hold a cultural, historic and traditional connection.

“The minority communes might not be united in a big Municipality, because that would bring a mixture of the population and would create losses of their ethnic identity. These communes will receive a special attention”, Cuci declared.

By proposition of the Socialist Party Parliament Member, Blendi Klosi, another criteria was made clear, that of the borders between communes.

“They should remove the fear and confusion that communes might be disintegrated, or that the same territory of one commune might be divided between two districts or two municipalities”, Klosi declared.

“We think that the existing border of the commune should not be touched”, Cuci explained.

Together with the criteria, the commission approved the working program. The government has a deadline until May 15th to decide for three or four variants of the new electoral area. Regardless of the criteria, it is still difficult to decide in how many municipalities will the country be reduced to. After the new maps arrived in the commission, it will have five days for the hearing sessions and to be discussed with experts. After this process, the commission will approve the most acceptable variants that for two months will be consulted with citizens to return for approval in Parliament after July 20th, which coincides with the end of this session.