Constitutional Court on Pyramid

The Constitutional Court decision was taken this Tuesday, but was distributed one day later through an e-mail by the Parliament Press Office. Different to what this action insinuates, the issue of the new Parliamentary Complex is not closed. On the contrary, it is more open than ever.

To put it simpler, the Constitutional Court rejected the form of the Municipality request, and not the core of the case. They reviewed the issue either the Parliament decision overcomes the competences of the local administration or not.

The Court notes that the decision is an individual Parliament Act. The decision expresses the purpose for building a Parliamentary Complex, but it doesn’t exclude the Municipality from exerting its duties, such as giving the construction permission, etc.

The Court notes that the Parliament Decision contains no conflict between the Municipality and the Parliament, so there is no reason to suspend the decision. But the decision specifies that a law must be passed for the construction procedures. This law was approved on July 14th. This time, the Constitutional Court must focus on the core of the case, if the law of construction procedures violates the Constitution or not. The new request, presented this time by a group of MPs, argues that the law has usurped the competences that belong to the local administration.

The law predicts that the Council of Territory Regulation is the competent institution for giving the permit. But the MPs’ request brings another argument from the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, when the Court itself considers as incompatible the decentralization principle of the KRRTRSH competence for giving permits to objects of a special importance in the city centers, which also approve the urban studies.

 For Tirana, the permit should be given by the Council of Territory Regulation for Tirana. The law for the organizing and functioning of the local government requires qualified majority, while the law for the procedures of the construction of a new Parliamentary Complex was approved with simple majority. In what is called “hierarchy of normative acts”, the qualified majority laws stand above all other laws.

The law never mentions the value of the construction, and according to the MPs, this damages the principle of juridical security, because it leaves unlimited spaces for public fund abuses. The MPs believe that the Constitutional Court will support them for a law that was not decreed by the President, but it entered in act with his silence. The plenary silence of the Constitutional Court that should be held on November 10th was postponed to December 23rd.

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