Albania's Special Parliamentary Commission debates territorial reform proposals

Albania's Special Parliamentary Commission for Territorial Reform concluded its nine‑month mandate without a consensus document. The commission released a 300‑page final report that outlines four analytical scenarios for reorganising the country's 61 municipalities based on functional and administrative capacity. The scenarios range from “asymmetric decentralisation” – keeping current borders while reallocating responsibilities – to “large mergers” that would combine municipalities into larger units, a middle‑ground option with partial mergers and reallocation of specialised functions, and a model that limits municipalities to basic functions only. The report also examines the creation of a new regional layer above the existing 12 districts to handle cross‑municipal services.

At a meeting on 15 July, vice‑chair Luciano Boçi criticised the pace of the process, saying, “We cannot skip the stages set in the work schedule.” He noted that hearings for Tirana and other major districts remain incomplete, that public surveys and expert studies have not been carried out, and that the commission has only fulfilled about two‑and‑a‑half of the scheduled tasks. Boçi called for extending the deadline to October and linked the territorial reform timetable to that of the Electoral Reform Commission, arguing that the two reforms are interdependent. He also highlighted that proposals to reduce the number of municipalities lack broad support, with some evidence suggesting the retention or even increase of the current 61 units.