In today's plenary session, Democratic Party MP Jorida Tabaku spoke out strongly against the government's initiative for changes to the law on concessions and public-private partnerships (PPP), emphasizing that the major problems Albania faces today in this sector are not related to a lack of rules, but to the corrupt way in which the socialist government has implemented them over the years.
Tabaku recalled that 12 active concession contracts, of which 6 are under investigation, represent one of the country's most serious financial scandals, as the government has signed contracts that amount to "almost half of the Gross Domestic Product", while most of them are suspected of serious violations and corruption.
"This is not simply a failure of a law or of a few ministers. It is a failure of the Albanian state, it is a regime that has used PPPs as an instrument to enrich the minority and impoverish the majority," Tabaku declared.
According to her, the massive corruption of PPP schemes has completely turned into the architecture of socialist governance, a system built "stone by stone" to control economic policies, minimize competition in the market, and capture independent institutions.
"The crisis of the Albanian economy did not come from the market, nor from the pandemic, nor from the war. It came from corruption. From a designed system that enriches political clientele and impoverishes citizens," Tabaku emphasized.
DP with concrete proposals: transparency, restrictions and banning of incriminated companies
Tabaku announced that the opposition has submitted a series of amendments aimed at restoring European standards and eliminating the violations that have made PPPs a symbol of government corruption:
• Mandatory transparency at every stage of the concession: from feasibility studies, to tender documents, approvals, performance and final contracts.
"No government concession contract has been published to date," Tabaku stressed.
• Automatic exclusion of companies that have committed fraud, corruption, money laundering, forgery or participation in criminal groups.
She recalled that the US Department of State has also warned that Albanian PPPs are used for money laundering.
• Limiting contracts for the same companies, as today 80% of PPPs are concentrated in the hands of 5–10 operators affiliated with the government.
• Prohibition of manipulation of tenders through internal schemes between companies, conflict of interest and false declarations.
"These are the minimum European standards. Without transparency and without limiting access to public money, PPPs remain an instrument of abuse, not of development," Tabaku said.
"There is no law that can regulate a system that the government has built to capture the state"
The Democratic MP emphasized that the problem is not with the legal initiatives brought by the majority, but with the fact that the government has used PPPs to consolidate power and strengthen its economic clientele.
"Albania cannot win this battle with the same people, with the same majority, with the same ministers who produced the most corrupt contracts of the decade. There is no law that corrects this political reality," she said.
On the eve of the International Anti-Corruption Day, Tabaku called for a profound political and institutional change, emphasizing that only a government with true will can break the cycle of state capture.
