TIRANA, May 1 – The Socialist government approved a few months back and sent to parliament this week a bill that foresees the ‘alienation’ of public property by skipping the process of public procurement and by establishing a trade company named the Corporation of Albanian Investments, which will operate under commercial laws and private procurement rules.
According to local media reports, the government will pass to the CAI to manage and use for investment, in collaboration with private businesses, the state’s immobile properties, including public land along the coast.
Further on, the government also recently proposed a normative act – another law envisaging a new method by which the state is allowed to privatize state property.
When adopted and enforced, this act will allow the state to privatize without a race or tender any other public property that will not be able to be transferred to the corporation, thus avoiding the need for the special laws it has so far adopted, such as in was the case of Vlora Airport and the National Theater, and which have been criticized by political experts and the European Commission alike.
The bill, which proposes a revision of a normative act with legal force since 2008 relating to the privatization of state property, presents a third privatization method, different from public auctions and tenders.
The opposition’s resigned Democratic Party also made a statement concerning the establishment of this corporation through former MP Jorida Tabaku, saying that it represents a corrupt affair.
“The Investment Corporation draft law makes Edi Rama the defacto owner of any public immovable property in the country and the possibility to use the corporation to distribute public properties to oligarchs or unidentified people without any accountability,” the DP announcement read.
The method the government refers to is called “alienation”, and is defined in the draft law as the passing of public property to private property.
“The transfer of state property as private is also done in function of the general local plans, according to the conditions and criteria defined by the decision of the Council of Ministers. The decision of the Council of Ministers, in these cases, also defines the conditions that must be fulfilled by the applicants for the alienation of a state property contract, the manner of assessment of state property as well as the bodies involved in the process and their role,” the draft law states.
According to political and legal experts, however, this bill is basically a generalization of the procedures the government tried to undertake through its “special” laws that triggered public debate – a private company requires the state to use its property and then the state negotiates a contract with this company regarding the value of the property and the terms of the contract.
The precise details of these negotiations, the manner of evaluation and any other element of the privatization process with alienation, the law leaves it to deploy each case to the Council of Ministers with the DCM.
This means that the draft law gives the government even greater power than the special laws that were to be approved by the Assembly and decreed by the President.
The government argues that this bill will make it easier for private landowners whose land is adjacent to public property to develop their land in cooperation with the state.
Media reports pointed out it was precisely this argument the Rama government gave to pass the special law of the National Theater. Because a small area owned by the Fusha company was adjacent to public lands, there was a “special” procedure to allow Fusha shpk to develop both its property and public property including the site where the National Theater is located.
If this bill is approved, it will give unlimited power to the Socialist government in power to hand over public property to businesses without any parliamentary oversight and without any kind of transparency or public accountability.
Combined with the proposal for the CAI, which will centralize the management of all public property directly under the Prime Minister, this bill will turn the privatization of public property into a direct negotiation between the government and private companies without any form of competition in the free market and, undoubtedly, with severe long-term financial consequences for the country.
The government’s previous “special laws,” which very much remind this current bill, have already drawn criticism, as they often also go against the Stabilization and Association Agreement.
These “special laws” were reviewed by the European Commission on suspicion of violating the principles of free competition and non-discrimination of companies.
