The Committee on Natural Resources, Infrastructure and Sustainable Development held discussions on the "Package for Albania", an initiative of the Democratic Party Parliamentary Group, which includes three draft laws for the repeal of the "Mountains Package", the law on Strategic Investments and amendments to the law on Protected Areas.

The meeting was attended by the head of the DP Parliamentary Group, Gazment Bardhi, and MP Ina Zhupa, who presented the package as an attempt to oppose policies that, according to them, are placing public property and assets in the service of private interests. Zhupa emphasized the protection of territory and protected areas, while Bardhi criticized the manner in which the Law on Strategic Investments and the “Mountains Package” were implemented.

The DP argues that the three initiatives aim to bring back into focus the public interest, property, and protection of natural resources, demanding the repeal of laws that, according to the opposition, have created space for favoritism and private benefits.

Excerpt from the discussion;

The three initiatives are an opportunity to confront the public interest, property and assets of Albania with the corrupt and plundering model of Edi Rama. The same model is found in all three laws: the use of the law to put property, territory and public assets in the function of private interests, a model that fosters favoritism, extortion and illegal enrichment and is accompanied by corruption, hiding assets and money laundering.

Therefore, the question that should accompany all three initiatives under consideration is: why does the Socialist Party insist on defending the laws that maintain this model, that conflict with the interests of Albanians and that Europe asks us to repeal.

The European Parliament has explicitly called for the repeal of the amendments to the Law on Protected Areas, because they allow large infrastructure and tourism projects in ecologically sensitive areas. The European Commission has raised concerns about all three laws: on Strategic Investments, for lack of transparency, unequal treatment, favoritism and lack of competition; on the Mountain Package, because it could pave the way for large-scale construction in forests and pastures and risks conflicting with European standards for nature protection; and on Protected Areas, it says that the 2024 amendments have led to a deterioration in nature protection.

According to public information, over 2 million square meters of state land have been given to private interests on the South Coast alone. This is the plundering model that the “Package for Albania” seeks to stop.

In 11 years, under the law on strategic investments, 98% of the permits were granted to five oligarchs. After distributing the coast, with the "Mountain Package" they are seeking to take over the forests and pastures as well.

During the meeting, Gazment Bardhi said:

"After 11 years, it turns out that 98% of the cases belong to five oligarchs who have received the title of strategic investor, while only 2% of the decisions are related to foreign investors, and even these are two personal friends of Prime Minister Edi Rama. So, the declared goal and the reality that results years later from the implementation of this law do not match each other."

Therefore, what you say about the "Mountain Package" is not the purpose for which the government was invested with the law brought here. The government was committed because it had forests and pastures left undistributed, after distributing the coast. Now it is the turn of the forests and pastures of the Republic of Albania to give them to a handful of people in the name of investments.

But you don't solve the problem of that villager on the top of the mountain, who built his house on land he inherited for generations and now has no documents. He built his house there and you don't deal with him.

If you dealt with it, you would have our vote in favor. But you are not saying that you will solve the problem of that ordinary citizen who has had his house in a mountainous area for 100 years, but still has it without documents, due to the history of property rights in the Republic of Albania.

"You say that someone who comes with a project to invest there, in the mountains or in the fields, will benefit from this law. Because this is not only related to the mountains. And, since it is called "investment in the mountains", I do not know of any mountains in Kavaja, Rrogozhina, or Shijak, where it turns out there are applications," Bardhi concluded during the presentation.