Prime Minister Edi Rama declared that the country's municipalities will be subject to a new organizational structure designed by a British consulting company, but the concealment of the contract and its work product is criticized by civil society representatives.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prime Minister Edi Rama during the conference held in February 2024 in Dubai. Photo courtesy: Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on July 21 that the country's municipalities would follow the example of the Municipality of Tirana with a new organizational structure, designed on the basis of a British consultancy that he billed to the institute founded by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
According to Rama, the model would also be adopted by other municipalities in the country, which, under his public orders, were replacing all administrators and directors of public services.
Due to the lack of transparency from public institutions, it is unclear what the new structure of the Municipality of Tirana envisages and the cost that the taxpayers of the capital pay to the British consultants.
The consultancy for the Municipality of Tirana that Rama billed to the Tony Blair Institute is actually provided by another British company called 'Delivery Associates', a consultancy firm founded in 2013 by Sir Michael Barber, an associate of Tony Blair and part of his administration in the years 2001-2005.
But since 2024, when its arrival was trumpeted by Mayor Erion Veliaj as an 'audit' of the municipality, there is no information on what services this company has provided.
The Municipality of Tirana refused to make the contract with "Delivery Associates" available to BIRN, claiming that the Archives sector could not identify the documentation, while requesting from BIRN the number and date of protocoling the document in order to identify it.
The Municipality's absurd reasoning was also supported by the Commissioner for the Right to Information and Personal Data Protection, who, through a response to the editorial office's complaint, accepted this reasoning of the public institution as correct.
Civil society representatives consider the lack of transparency about the initiated reform as worrying and illegal.
Agron Haxhimali, director of the Institute for Albanian Municipalities, told BIRN that failing to publish consultancy contracts on official platforms or making them accessible to the public through a request for information “constitutes not only a clear legal violation, but also a lack of political will and integrity.”
According to him, both the law "On Local Self-Government" and the law "On the Right to Information" consider transparency as a fundamental principle of local government and oblige every municipality to publish contracts and financial information on its official websites.
“Failure to comply with these provisions shows a great distance between promises of open government and real practices, damaging public trust and increasing the perception of a lack of accountability in the management of public funds,” said Haxhimali.
For the director of the 'Citizen Center', Rigels Xhemollari, this behavior shows the bunkerization of institutions and "political will and legal mechanisms are needed to implement the right to information."
"From our experience and practice, we have understood that public institutions, including the Tirana municipality, are transparent if they request non-sensitive information such as statistical data and figures, and retreat into the bunker when they are asked for information on money, contracts, or lobbying data," said Xhemollari.
“Customized reform”
The lack of transparency not only includes the contract with the consulting company "Delivery Associates", but also the product produced by them regarding the organizational reform of local government.
But civil society representatives consider this a "custom-made reform", which does not take into account the needs and stance of communities and provides no guarantee of results.
“I think Rama has ordered a reform that is in the interest of stripping local government of its powers, an initiative that the prime minister himself has undertaken with the water reform, waste management, or the demolition of unauthorized buildings in municipal territories, as well as the issuance of construction permits with a certain capacity,” Rigels Xhemollari, director of the organization “Civic Stability,” told BIRN.
According to him, successful reforms are not made on demand, but in consultation with residents, local units, mayors and structures, which today suffer the consequences of a reform that, according to Xhemollari, created "a great distance between the municipality and citizens, a distance in transparency, distance and accountability."
The same position is shared by Agron Haxhimali, director of the Institute for Albanian Municipalities, according to whom what is happening is not a reform according to the criteria that a true reform in local government should be.
“Technical assistance for the internal restructuring of municipalities, whether from the Tony Blair Institute or any other entity, does not constitute territorial reform,” he told BIRN, adding that “a real reform requires a clear action plan, measurable indicators in the territorial, administrative, financial and electoral system, as well as a visible improvement in services for citizens.”
Haxhimali insists that "only the active involvement of the community and municipal councils at every stage can give value and legitimacy to the proposed changes."
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