President Ilir Meta has appointed Përparim Kalon as the sixth member of the Constitutional Court of Albania, making it finally functional after more than three years.
The Justice Appointments Council (KED) submitted a list of only two candidates to the President on Wednesday for one of the vacancies in the court. They were Përparim Kalo and Aleksandër Toma.
Meta appointed Kalo on the same day, making the Constitutional Court formally functional with six of its nine members. The judge is expected to take the oath of office tomorrow.
The Constitutional Court has been dysfunctional since 2018 due to the vetting process which led to dismissals and resignations of judges.
One day earlier, on Tuesday, President Ilir Meta swore in the fifth member of the Constitutional Court, Altin Binaj, who was elected by the parliament.
In both cases, the KED seems to have violated the legal requirement to submit a list of three candidates to the parliament and president. It submitted one single candidate to the parliament, and only two candidates to the president.
US Ambassador Yuri Kim congratulated Albanian leaders for taking “urgent action” to make the court functional before the end of the year.
Update: EU Ambassador Luigi Soreca claimed that the court is now “fully functional”, despite it having only six of its nine members, and that Albania has now met all conditions to start EU accession talks.
