Bregu: The Integration Council should be led by the opposition

The Chairwoman of the Commission of Integration, Majlinda Bregu, who has been proposed as co-chair of the Council, says that it is unclear if the structure comes from the government or the Parliament, and as such it replaces the existing structures.

However, the former Minister of Integration says that the most important is that the model proposed by the government is not the European one anymore. Bregu explains that this is not a refusal by the opposition, but a request to the government, so that they can implement the European model and standard. The National Council of Integration is a monitoring structure of the Parliament above the government, and it is led by the opposition.

“This means that they should not invent any unexisting model, untested experiences that have proven complete failure since the beginning. This means that the only standard that has been implemented in Estonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Macedonia is that this procedure has been led by the Parliament. We ask the government to do the same in Albania, which means that the National Council of Integration should be chaired by the opposition”, Bregu declared.

Ironizing that the model offered by the government return the executive into a secretariat of the Parliament, Bregu explained the formula of the European model of this structure that monitors the progress of the membership negotiations.

“It means that the National Council of Integration has a Chairperson from the opposition, a vice chair from the majority, and equal number of votes. Being a Consultative Council, it should include representatives from the civil society, the president, the government and independent institutions”, Majlinda Bregu added.

For this, the opposition has notified the EU delegation in Tirana and the European Commission in Brussels, whose representatives will be in Tirana by the end of September for the next meeting of high-level dialogue between Albania and the EU. It is unknown if the opposition will be part of this meeting, due to the boycott in Parliament, but according to Bregu, the government is the one that should change its stance with the opposition.

She doesn’t see any hopes for this: “In a Parliament where the supervisory role of the opposition is violated, and where there is no space to political co-existence, there is no hope to have any draw back from the government”.

Prime Minister Edi Rama declared in his interview on Top Story that the recent stances of the opposition are provincial, but the former Minister of Integration, the DP is not looking anything more than respecting the rights of the opposition and of the rule of law. “This is a standard European stance. If the Prime Minister sees Europe as a province, then yes, we are in that European standard”.

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