FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
After the decision in 2021 that overturned the property law, the Constitution has suspended the implementation of new changes....
The Constitutional Court has suspended the law on property restitution and compensation. After the overthrow of several articles 2 years ago and forced the Ministry of Justice to draft the law from the beginning, the Constitution has suspended its implementation.
This time the cause is the Muslim Community of Albania. They filed a lawsuit calling the law unfair and the Constitutional Court made a decision yesterday, suspending it until a final decision is made.
Based on Articles 32 and 45 of Law no. 8577, dated 10.02.2000 "On the organization and functioning of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Albania", amended and articles 11, point 3, letter "f", 26 and 27 of the Regulation on Judicial Procedures of the Constitutional Court, decided:
1. Passing the case for consideration in a public plenary session.
2. Acceptance of the request for the suspension of the implementation of the law no. 77/2022, dated 17.11.2022 "On some additions and changes to law no. 133/2015 "On the treatment of property and the completion of the process of property compensation ", the Constitution states.
Details of the law
The new law "On property handling and termination" was approved in November last year and will be implemented at the beginning of 2023. The opposition opposed it, while 74 votes of the socialists were enough for the draft to pass. The law was changed after the Constitution struck down the compensation scheme and the government was forced to intervene.
According to the new law, more than 10,000 files will be reassessed from scratch with the new scheme, while penalized are those owners who are affected by the change in the cadastral item, who will have to settle for only 10 percent of the value that has properties on the market today.
But an important change is the opening of the deadline for unprocessed files in the first phase. There are more than 7,000 files, some of which are in the Court of First Instance, which will be reviewed by the Property Agency. The deadline for their reassessment ends on December 31, 2024.
The new scheme
Thus, despite the disputes and legal battles with interest groups, the government did not give up the property valuation scheme, based on its cadastral entry at the time of expropriation. So, if it was agricultural land, the compensation value will be for agricultural land and if it was plot land, it will be compensated as such even today. But almost half of the decisions are assets that were outside the yellow line, while today they have the status of land.
These families will only benefit from 10 percent of the value that this property has on the market today. "The financial evaluation of the final decisions must ensure that the total value of compensation, regardless of the form of compensation, is not less than 10 percent of the value of the property, calculated according to the current cadastral item. For this purpose, when the cadastral item has changed for the property recognized for compensation, as well as from the evaluation of the final decisions, according to points 1 and 2 of this article, it results that the expropriated entity benefits from less than 10 percent of the value of the property calculated according to the current cadastral item, the property recognized for compensation is assessed based on the current cadastral item", the law states.
In total, there are more than 25,000 decisions awaiting execution. In the amended law, it is determined that in cases where the right to return and compensation of property has been recognized, citizens will receive the difference when the value of the returned property is lower than the value of the remaining property for compensation. But, this will happen in those cases when there is no change of the cadastral item. So the land has the same status as at the time of confiscation. In contrast, therefore, when a surface of land, which was outside the yellow line, or agricultural land and today is plot land, the owners will receive only 10 percent of the difference. In simpler terms, if the difference between the returned property and the one remaining for compensation after revaluation results in 10 million ALL, the owners will receive only 1 million ALL.
The amended law also defines an extension of the deadline by two years, namely until December 31, 2024, for the review of unprocessed files.
But now the law is suspended. The Muslim community claims that it does not benefit from the lands due to it with this scheme and now the ordeal of compensation will begin again. After the first decision of the Constitutional Court, the process was blocked for almost 2 years. But it seems that now we have another obstacle. / Pamphlet
Lini një Përgjigje