ISP: The Parliament has ignored the legal initiatives of the opposition for investigative commissions, even though they were the same as the majority

In the climate of numerous international and local criticism directed at the Assembly for the misuse of the parliamentary majority to hinder the constitutional principle of parliamentary control of the executive power through the mechanism of investigative commissions, the majority has initiated a draft law with several changes.

Its content will be the subject of discussion and from the wording, it seems clear that it is more of an initiative to attract attention and offer a formal "solution" than to solve the problems identified regarding the approval, operation and impact of parliamentary investigative commissions. .

The Institute of Political Studies (ISP) has continuously monitored the parliament and the data shows that the Parliament has refused for at least 18 months to include in its agenda two identical legal initiatives related to investigative commissions that have the same object as the new initiative of the majority.

The first initiative dates back to March 2, 2022 (the Spaho initiative),

the second initiative on December 9, 2022 (Tabaku initiative).

The two opposition initiatives were ignored, while the majority initiative was announced to be part of the parliamentary agenda. The table presents the three initiatives, two of which still have no decision-making nor parliamentary review, as well as the last decision of the Assembly in 2016, when it rejected an initiative for changes in the legal framework of parliamentary investigative commissions.

The progress report of the EU for Albania, the reports of the FH, the ISP, the AI, and other international and local bodies that are the subject of evaluation, as well as the functioning standards of the parliament, have criticized the a priori limitation of the right of 35 deputies to initiate a committee parliamentary investigation, a right sanctioned in Article 77 of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia.

In a democratic country such situations would be avoided, but in countries with hybrid democracies there are political and institutional acts that would offer at least a set of reference standards, such as;

The Assembly should initiate a debate in the Laws Committee and within a period of 30 days receive different opinions regarding the needs of reforming the legislation on investigative commissions;

The Assembly should address the concern to the Constitutional Court or the Venice Commission, seeking resolution of disputes or, in the second case, interpretation of the provisions and standards about the commissions;

The Assembly could include in the agenda the two archived initiatives of the deputies and in the meantime avoid the block overthrow of the seven opposition initiatives for parliamentary commissions, promoting the reform of the law on commissions and the need for institutional dialogue between the two political parties.

The Assembly did neither one nor the other, but chose the "Albanian" way of dealing with the problems, - one-sided political initiative, incomplete and ineffective initiative, order after procedures not the essence, en bloc rejection of requests for opposition commissions, as and challenge to international and local suggestions.

To understand how formal the initiative is, just read the report, which contains no fewer than 150 spelling errors based on the standard of the Albanian language! Also, regardless of the fact that it was initiated by a lawyer member of parliament or her staff, the relation and the constitutional references are not complete, as well as it contains minimal legal notions and norms, focusing on the political needs and political interpretations of the day, - no approach serious for a parliament that expects in a few days to open the opportunity for concrete EU membership negotiations.

The Institute of Political Studies (ISP) is continuously monitoring the process and of course, in any case they will send their own comments and suggestions, despite the fact that in practice the opinions of civil society are not taken into consideration.