The Albanian Constitutional Court has ruled as unconstitutional and abrogated the electoral threshold for independent candidates.
Under the electoral code, an independent candidate winning a seat in one of the country’s 12 electoral zones needed to pass a national threshold of 1% in order to enter the parliament.
The same threshold applies to political parties. Albania has a proportional regional electoral system with party-lists, but parties are obliged to compete in each of the 12 regional electoral zones.
The court’s ruling stated that applying the national threshold to independent candidates, who are allowed to run only in only one electoral zone, is discriminatory and incompatible with the principle of equality before the law.
The case was brought before the court by Elton Debreshi, a miner, who ran as an independent candidate in the April 2021 elections.
The Court upheld the 1% threshold for political parties.
