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Until the month of September 2023, about 195 million euros (194,915,845 euros) is calculated for the bill of the Albanian state for damages against the decisions of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR) and the Court of Arbitration.
In the draft budget of 2024, the data on actual and contingent obligations from the decisions of two international courts are given, where the highest financial obligation is for the International Arbitration cases. The total actual and contingent liability until the month of September 2023 reaches the value of about 173.1 million euros.
Factual Obligation, which is the obligation cited in a final decision of the Court of Arbitration, of final form, for which the legal procedures within the Albanian state have not been finalized, is about 61 million euros.
Contingent liability, which is the liability cited in a decision of the Arbitration Court/, and/or eventual contract of law firms, for which the legal procedures have not been completed, is calculated at 112 million euros.
From the table of data for the financial invoice with the highest value of the obligation, the case "Hydro and others against Albania" of the Italian entrepreneur Francesco Becchetti leads. The financial obligation to this decision is 108 million euros. The case was filed with the Court of Arbitration on June 29, 2015. The final decision was made on March 29, 2023.
The decisions of the International Court of Arbitration are related to the resolution of conflicts in bilateral or multilateral disputes, in charge of the Albanian state. For this reason, the Ministry of Finance and Economy assesses the financial effects accompanying these decisions, with significant risk for the state budget.
"For the most part, the financial effects resulting from the implementation of these decisions have been borne by the budget of the budgetary institutions themselves (mainly the line ministry), which have also been defendants in the relevant trials.
Meanwhile, in cases where the defendant party is described as the "Albanian state" or the "Albanian government", the decisions are liquidated through the budget of the MFE and/or the Reserve Fund of the state budget, if the need arises.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy, in continuation, has recommended strengthening the negotiating role of budgetary institutions and the State Attorney's Office in matters of this nature, as well as disciplining the process of financial settlement of beneficiaries.
This, with the final goal of easing, reducing and/or avoiding the financial burden on the state budget", it is quoted in the draft report.
While the total liabilities from the decisions of the ECHR until September 2023 reach about 21.7 million euros (of which the actual liability is estimated at 17.9 million euros and the contingent liability at 3.8 million euros).
The decisions of the ECtHR are mainly issues and decisions related to the return and compensation of properties to former owners.
The list of compensation cases is headed by the "Sharxhi v. Albania" case with a financial liability of 13.3 million euros, followed by the "Rista et al. v. Albania" case with a 4.4 million euro liability.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy underlines in the relation of the draft budget that it has continuously respected all the decisions approved by the ECtHR, considering the fact that when the payments are not made within three months from the date when the relevant decision takes final form, the Albanian state is charged with the payment of a late interest for each day of delay.
However, in order to guarantee the timely settlement of these decisions, the MFE emphasizes in relation that it has consistently recommended the use of all possible institutional and procedural channels, within the spaces provided by the legal framework in force, suggesting, according to the possibilities of the state budget, scheduling with installments of the financial obligation, in negotiation with the beneficiaries.
Even for the year 2023, the liquidation of obligations of this type is covered by the Reserve Fund of the state budget./Monitor
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