Albanian Package of Emergency Laws Alarms Rights Groups

Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama and US Ambassador Yuri Kim in a meeting on 31 January 2020. Photo: Edi Rama/Twitter

Minister said the measures were needed to fight organised crime and corruption, but local human rights organisations said they had not been consulted and claimed the changes could pose dangers to human rights and the separation of powers. Albania's Western partners told BIRN they had not read what the government had approved.

The laws had not yet been published by the time of publication, and the office of Prime Minister Edi Rama did not respond to questions from BIRN about when they will be made available.

In a press statement, Etilda Gjonaj, Minister of Justice, insisted that the authorities had consulted their "partners", a term usually used to describe the EU and US embassies. However, the embassies said they had not seen the laws.

The US embassy said it appreciated "the expressed will of the Prime Minister to fight the scourge of organised crime. However, we have had no opportunity to study the latest version [of laws] and we are waiting to understand the details". The EU embassy told BIRN it had "not seen the Normative Act adopted today and cannot comment at this point".

A group of 12 Albanian rights organisations condemned the package of laws and the way it had been approved as non-constitutional and as a possible danger to the system of checks and balances.

They said the fact that the package has not been made public was itself "a serious breach of the constitutional principles".

The Albanian constitution allows the government to undertake legal changes with immediate effect in case of national emergencies.

But Gjonaj did not explain what current emergency justified such a "normative" act and also...