It seems that in the final days of the current Parliament’s mandate, Prime Minister Edi Rama will pass the contentious waste management law, which will allow the import of foreign waste into the country.
Leader of the parliamentary group of the PS, Gramoz Ruçi, informed the PS deputies on Monday that:
On Thursday we have a packed session. We will also have a meeting of the Conference of Parliamentary Leader and I want to put several important laws on the calendar to be approved within this season. I mean the law for processing solid waste in Vlora as well as the import of waste.
Profiting from the political situation in the country, where the public’s attention is directed to the political crisis and its solution, Prime Minister Rama will pass one of the most controversial and opposed laws proposed by his government.
This development is an frontal attack on all activists and citizens who thought that their attempts had managed to avoid the approval of a law that can have severe consequences for the environment and people’s life, turning the country in a garbage dump for other countries.
The decision of the Socialist majority is all the more disturbing because a reevaluation of the law may actually be a legal violation.
Parliament approved the waste management law on September 22, 2016, but President Buhar Nishani refused to sign the law, which was returned to Parliament on October 14, 2016.
Since the moment the law returned to Parliament, the Commission for Productive Activity, Commerce, and Environment, chaired by Eduard Shalsi, who recently become Minister of State, has violated all the legal procedures and deadline foreseen by the Parliamentary Regulations.
According to art. 86 of the Regulations, the Speaker of Parliament immediately has to send a law back to the appropriate commission when the President has rejected it. This commission then has 8 weeks to respond.
As President Nishani returned the law on October 14, 2016, this deadline has been clearly violated. The violation of Regulations art. 86 at the same time implies the violation of the Constitution, art. 76, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, and 86.
This also means that the original law can no longer be brought to the Parliamentary floor. Because Parliament failed to reject Nishani’s decree not to sign the law, the law is automatically void.
The government will have to propose a completely new draft law, passing through the entire procedure yet again. It would be illegal once again to propose the same law that was rejected earlier by the President. The last recourse of civil society, and the President, would be an appeal to the Constitutional Court.
