"You Kreshnik, what prevented you from making the map of priority areas and sending it to the government?" - Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed the Mayor of Kuçova, Kreshnik Hajdari, on Thursday during a meeting with the mayors, where they received a firm order to submit the maps of priority areas to the government for the implementation of the controversial "Mountain Package" law.
Although Hajdari tried to justify that the submission of the map was hindered by the Cadastre's responses on the status of land ownership, his justification was rejected by Rama.
"If you expect an answer from the ASHK, you haven't understood the law. You haven't understood the package, you haven't understood anything," Rama addressed the mayor.
For Prime Minister Rama, the package is the "cure" for the thirty-odd-year-old problem of the lack of property documents for residents living in rural areas.
The law stipulates that municipalities are the initiators of the procedure that will lead to the transfer of state or private properties into the ownership of "investors", by requesting the government to declare lands in their territory as "development zones".
This request, according to the provision, "is justified by the presence of non-owner possessors in the territory of the area, as well as by the difficulties encountered in issuing territorial development acts (development and construction permits) in relation to the rest of the territory, as a result of the lack of regulation of legal relations of private ownership over land."
Since it was launched in March of this year with a dedicated website where anyone interested can express interest online, the initiative has stalled in the 11 procedures planned to be followed in its first step; the creation of a land map by municipalities for these potential investments.
The Minister for Local Government, Ervin Demo, former mayor of Berat, claimed during the meeting that out of the hundreds of expressions of interest that had come for this initiative, 33 projects with investment potential had been identified so far, investments that according to him started at 10 million euros.
The mayors' hesitations or attempts to clarify the problems they had encountered in implementing the initiative were silenced by Rama's dismissive tones, who, in an imperative manner, asked them to "wake up and have all the maps come by October."
The Prime Minister's behavior with the mayors is not an isolated case and has been criticized previously as an infringement of local autonomy, but in this case, the problems seem to be deeper than the issue of the independence of local elected officials; it is their encouragement to get involved in procedures that could in the future create legal clashes and property conflicts for the residents of their areas.
Local government experts and lawyers see this legal initiative as overlapping with other laws that have attempted for years to resolve property problems and as a mechanism that risks inciting social conflicts in the areas where it will be applied.
Agron Haxhimali from the Institute of Municipalities, an organization that focuses on local government issues, told BIRN that any map of priority areas that is made without taking into account the ownership problems over those lands will create new clashes.
According to Haxhimali, the "Mountain Package" is an initiative with potential for the development of remote mountainous areas, but the way it is being implemented shows, according to him, "more administrative haste than sustainable planning."
"Without resolving the legal knot of ownership and without guaranteeing transparency, any investment map risks remaining a formal exercise, not a real vision for development," he assesses, emphasizing that in this context "any 'investment map' that is made without first clarifying these relationships could create legal conflicts later for both investors and local residents."
In this context, Haxhimali does not see municipalities as obstacles, but as actors who are facing a lack of legal certainty and great responsibility for every firm they decide to establish.
"Every well-studied decision by municipalities means one less conflict and greater legal accountability," he says, suggesting that the prime minister be more of a listener to mayors than an order to expedite processes, so that these processes are legal and exclude conflicts of any kind.
Even for lawyer Marash Logu, the initiative does not produce any solutions, as claimed by the government, except that it creates new problems and contradicts the articles of the Constitution that protect the right to property and other property laws.
Logu, who has represented the opposition in legal battles at the Constitutional Court, argues the 'unconstitutionality' of the "Mountain Package" and the social problems that, according to him, its implementation brings on the ground.
“The term 'unowned possessor' on which the entire initiative is based does not exist in any court jurisprudence, neither in the Constitution nor in the laws of the country,” he told BIRN, adding that “unowned possessor is practically legalizing illegal occupiers of property, whether public or private.”
According to the declared goal, the scheme aims to encourage residents to return to invest in their lands in mountainous areas, where depopulation and lack of development are problems. But according to Logu, it is not limited to mountainous areas, but can be applied anywhere, even on the coast.
"It seems like the same scheme as the strategic investment law, which gave some people the opportunity to loot state property and citizens' property," says Logu.
On the other hand, he reinforces Haxhimali's concern about clashes over ownership and argues that such an initiative cannot be implemented without closing the open ownership processes related to the return and compensation of former legal owners, with Law 7501, the one for the completion of transitional ownership, legalization and privatization processes.
"Without completing these processes, because we have not yet resolved the return of property to the owners, nor the legalizations, nor the issue related to Law 7501, we are creating another legal mechanism that gives illegal occupants the opportunity to become owners," Logu reasons.
By anticipating the social conflicts that the implementation of the initiative could bring, Logu presents a potential conflict scheme.
“In the north, the lands are divided by mutual understanding between the residents. In those areas today you can have 1 or 2 families, as the others have moved due to depopulation, migration within or outside the country,” he said. “This initiative will give the opportunity to those who live there to be recognized as owners of larger areas than the area they own, and when tomorrow those who have moved abroad return to their ancestral lands, it will create conflict with the one to whom the state has given a title of ownership,” he assumed./BIRN/
