Alliance Against Waste Imports says if the new government won’t keep its promise, they will continue with the planned referendum
TIRANA, Jul 14 – The Alliance Against Waste Imports, an umbrella group of environmentalists and political activists, has repeated its call to ban all waste imports into the country. This time to the call was aimed at the new government of the new centre-left coalition led from Edi Rama, expected to take power in early September
They called on the new parliament that in the first session, scheduled for early September, it should amend the law on waste management that allows imports.
The Socialists have pledged to do so during their electoral campaign.
The alliance also said that if the new government won’t keep its promise, they will continue with the planned referendum, which has been approved by the Constitutional Court and for which the president has already set a date.
President Bujar Nishani has set December 22 as the day when a referendum on trash imports will be held.
The referendum request was initiated by the alliance activists, environmentalists and intellectuals, who collected more than 64,000 signatures calling on the government to annul two articles of a law that allows waste imports into Albania.
The signatures were certified by the Central Electoral Commission, which requires 50,000 signatures for a referendum to go ahead, and the legality of the request was approved by the Constitutional Court.
Arguing that Albania’s nascent recycling industry could not survive on the proceeds of domestic waste alone, in November 2011 the outgoing centre-right government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha approved a bill allowing some waste to be imported into the country so long as it conformed to a so-called “green list” of 55 materials.
Following approval of the law, activists joined forces and formed the alliance to condemn the change to the law and to demand a referendum on the issue, arguing that by allowing in such imports, Albania was turning itself into the garbage bin of Europe.
The Socialists have pledged to amend the law, but it is unknown how they will react to requests by the recycle industry that has been established in the country in the meantime.
