“Fuels” at Constitutional Court. Decision postponed

The 10-year agreement through which the government gives fuel coloring monopoly to a private Austrian company was sued at Court as anti-constitutional by the Fuel Association. The lawsuit is based on the procedures followed by the government for this concession.

According to the agreement, the private concession will benefit 6.5EUR for every ton of fuel that circulates in Albania, for the domestic or foreign market.

But the government approved it without passing it in Parliament. Some legal experts say that the 6.5 EUR fee per ton is a clear national tax, and the only authority allowed by the Constitution to establish national taxes is the Albanian Parliament. The fact that the government avoided the Parliament for this decision is the basis of this lawsuit.

The fuel control has been opposed since the beginning not only by the fuel associations, but also by the opposition, which declared that they would cancel it. Through this concession the government has given to the private company a monopoly for 10 years, with a cost of 150-200 million EUR in total. The money will be paid by the Albanian citizens through the final gas price, for a service that so far has been held with a zero cost from the technical inspectorate. Officially, the Court says that the reason why the decision has been postponed is that the association has added an annex to the suit and the other interested parties have been notified only a few days before.

But is this the real reason, or the postponement of the decision is related also with political developments in the country, with a new government that is being constituted and that has openly held a stance against this concession? The concession itself has turned into a delicate issue and any institution that will decide for its fate, will have 200 million EUR in play for the next 10 years.

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