Speech of the Prime Minister at the presentation of the Reform to definitely address the issue on Restitution and Compensation of Property:
To start, I don’t feel sorry for a group led by the inheritor of the Park and the Ancient Theatre of Butrint leaving this room, because I believe that in order to have a serious dialogue on this issue, which has an importance both historical and national, not only for those who are alive today, but for all generations to come, we need a serious partnership with all groups of interest, of course, but we absolutely need a clear dividing line between logic and the absurd.
The entire story concerning new Albania’s property is the story of an absurd having two parties, individuals that have been able to inherit the ancient amphitheaters on the one side, and on the other side a state and a government that was able to do the most unimaginable mess with property throughout the story of the relations with property between states and individuals.
In the Albania 2005 Progress Report, it was written that: “Property rights remain weak, damaging the potential for investment and economic activity. Clarifying ownership rights is a fundamental requirement to encourage economic development and long-term land management.” This report is connected every year in a direct way with Albania’s progress towards the realization of that common national aspiration, which is EU membership.
Unfortunately, from 2005 to 2013 Albania progress reports on property issues have been increasingly grim and hopeless.
Just as one of the five priorities, for which we are today under the supervision of the European Union and on which Albania’s European destiny on the road to the European Union is built, is property.
I want to say with conviction and pride that in this period we have opened a process that brings us here today, on a totally new basis. Avoiding on the one hand the successive and dizzying bills that Albania has been collecting for years due to a destructive political on the property by the European Court of Human Rights, and rationalizing a process that otherwise, according to the accepted logic of all these years, would take 1000 years to be concluded.
Not only nothing changed in the European Union evaluation in eight years, from the moment of the progress report I mentioned until the moment we received the right to rule the country, but this evaluation became increasingly worse. But the worst of all was that the situation of property and ownership relations was becoming increasingly catastrophic every year.
In the 2013 progress report, on which we started work, it is written that “Major and systematic efforts are necessary to address persisting problems in the area of property rights. Restitution, compensation and informal constructions are issues that must be solved.” This means, either you solve them or stay stick to yourselves, because there is no place for you in the European Union. That’s how simple and straightforward it is.
It is not only an issue of whether we have or not a place in the European Union, but it is about what place we will leave to our children. If we followed the track opened by the old policies of the past, we would certainly pass on to our children a country in a permanent social and civil conflict. Whereas, if we follow the track opened by this project, it is sure that, within a period of time that was unimaginable until a little while ago, we will put an end in only ten years to a problem that could have continued for 1000 years from the substantive standpoint, and for 350 years from a financial standpoint.
When the Minister of Finance spoke about 150 years, he referred to the formula which we now think that we have ready to start the process, whereas the old formulas would make this issue last much longer. Imagine that a law on property restitution, which was approved in 2004 with 34 articles, was amended 24 times in eight years by those who made the law. So, nothing was left from the 2004 law.
26 thousand decisions on compensation have been taken since 1993. Today, there are 9300 such decisions in the Agency’s offices waiting to be examined. When we inherited this Agency in 2013, there was no archive, but only a warehouse of folders scattered with no order and no inventory. We did a parallel job, since on the one hand we arranged the archive and digitalized the folders, and on the other hand we formed work teams in order to find a way out of this killing jungle, which kills every day the dreams, hopes and opportunities for our small Albania, with so many problems and so many owners. Just imagine this: there are in Albania as many people claiming properties and restitutions as twice the country’s surface.
If we agree at least on the fact that we have 28 thousand square meters, and no debate has been there on whether they are 28 or 29, applications for property are twice this figure! This absurdity has been developed with pathos thanks to a gang in the justice system. A criminal gang that has made a real slaughter using the judge’s gavel, has given away properties to some who are not entitled to and has denied the right of ownership to many others who deserve it.
No further than a little time ago, while we were preparing for a project on tourism development, we bumped into one of the members of this gang who have restituted 500 hectares in an area owned by the state and which has a great touristic potential. 500 hectares, just by striking a gavel in a dump called room or judge’s office. Imagine how many of them have occurred in all these years.
We know well what happened with legalizations. Although it has been a priority in eight years, they did nothing but promoted informal construction and told people that everything would be legalized so, “come on, let’s build”, because building is prosperity, prosperity brings happiness, happiness brings new building. Instead of having a process to forbid informal building and legalize what had to be legalized, informal constructions multiplied, occupied territories multiplied, and only less than 2% of the overall informal constructions were legalized. And among this less than 2% of legalizations, 80% are not at all for homes, but only motels, hotels, gas stations, warehouses, swimming pools and any kind of business started by occupying state property or others’ property. There were even citadels that were seized by means of ownership papers. Even fortresses and castles have owners now.
Actually, a pilot project made to test the situation throughout this process showed how much aggressive is the cancer lying across this system, on decisions given in 21 years. Overlapping of properties in the tested area, and disputes on property are the expression of an unprecedented turmoil. This is the reason that 70% of cases are still filed with the courts and continue to be material, raw material for the gang of judges that distributes properties according to the appetite, which is satisfied with cash. Cash, and neither rights nor documents were required to become owner.
The amount of forged ownership titles in the pilot project we made in that area of Vlore is dizzying, as is dizzying the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office, upon judging forged ownership titles, does not request their destruction. And the story that these are time-barred criminal offences is another story which needs to be dealt with separately, because the criminal offence of forgery of ownership titles cannot be time-barred being that title still active. Time-barred criminal offences are those committed and whose effect is over, whereas the effect of this criminal offence still continues even on that act of forgery, the so called owners becomes increasingly rich by building, renting and so on.
So, there is something intrinsic here which we, as part of this project, will be discussing both with the Prosecutor’s Office and the public, in order to restore justice not only for those whose properties have been ransacked, but for the Albanian people and for all those generations who will inherit this land torn apart, transformed into a rag by impostors with forged ownership titles in a blind cooperation with those who ruled the country until yesterday.
We are convinced that the mishmash done throughout the reviewing of claims filed for recognition of ownership, where every judge has played the role of the commission of property restitution and has returned property as if it were the commission, the agency, the state, is an essential reason to make a transparent process and a great trial for all these characters who have caused damage to Albania in every area. They have caused damaged in the area of properties and have certainly benefited from a totally abusive system, due, on the one hand, to the law I mentioned, with 31 articles in 2004, which was amended 24 times – and on the other hand, to a totally chaotic, unregulated system, without any criteria, without any procedure, where everyone has done as they pleased.
The Agency started work 22 months ago, but has not taken any decision, because it has not become part, and we have not become part, of this criminal masquerade, of this blind cooperation between the former government and impostors, who had as mediators the gang of judges involved in this crime. On the other hand, as reports of the European Union have said, as all experts and expertise in this process have highlighted, as the European Court of Human Rights has highlighted without telling us but acting, procedures of the legislation in force are procedures that only increase inequalities, favor clientelism and feed corruption and crime. And not only crime in the sense of property robbery, but organized crime.
In this process, organized crime has become lord of this country. Throughout the story of the recognition of returns and impositions of unfair property, the power of organized crime has been determinant and has engulfed whole areas of land, not only of the owners – as if everybody were owner in Albania since the time of Queen Teuta – but also the public and of all those families and ordinary people who are co-owners of this country and who are entitled to benefit from the benefits arising from the public administration of the common property of this country.
This process has endless stories which, our transparency, as we promised, made surface as phenomena, and not as infinity of events. On the other hand, it made possible for us to come here with a reform, which as all our reforms is radical, and which will not stop and be stopped by neither the heirs of ancient amphitheaters nor by those who are responsible for the catastrophe we inherited. We cannot leave to the next generations, not only this situation with the properties, but neither a pot of money in the form of punishment by the European Court of Human Rights.
This reform is the result of chance that this government was given, due to the seriousness shown, by the court in Strasbourg to take concrete measures and implement its recommendations for a real reform, a serious reform and a possible reform. No laws such as those made by the Democratic Party, only for the benefit of an electoral group of interest and violate everywhere freedoms and human rights.
It is sure that in 22 months, we managed not only to implement the recommendations of the European Court of Human Rights and the Action Plan that was adopted in the pilot implementation of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, but today we are able to be in front of the Albanian people and say confidently that Albania, which woke up, has finally a bill which is the reform that opens the way for a final settlement of this problem so big, and paves the way to a final retreat of the cancer that has been consuming Albania for over 20 years, and which started in 1945 when every property was nationalized, and every right over the property was denied.
The formula is simple, realistic and ensures the fulfillment of the purpose, to conclude this process on the principle that the State Attorney General expressed very clearly: “To owners what they are due, and to the Albanian society what it is due.”
No one can come today and claim property that was taken away from them, except for the property taken away in 1945 and the added value, which is the contribution of the whole society. The first one is unfair, the second is impossible. It is impossible, as it is impossible to talk with people who say that dialogue starts with the abolition of the law 7501 and the abolition of any law and procedure for legalization. So, according to them, dialogue starts on one side with making slaves all the people that from the land make a living in Albania, and on the other hand by “bombing” all of the houses built in these 25 years. What kind of dialogue is this? How can there be a dialogue on such a dizzying and unreal idea? Moreover, everybody claims to be owner, and if we analyze history, it will tell us very different things. As it tells us that pastures where sheep grazed with the permission of the Turks, who received allowances, should not necessarily be considered property, or as history shows us that property, first expropriated by King Zog and then by the government of fascist Italy, was reclaimed after money was paid three times.
But we do not want to start with this story, just by saying that our intention is to close this process by the time we want to sit at the table of the European family, namely 10 years.
Ten years to sit at the table of the European family, as representatives of a country that has no issues with property. This is our goal. On the other hand, 3 to 5 years are required to close the process of financial assessment of the entire amount of folders accumulated in a quarter of century, and to implement all the decisions given in these 23 years; 3 years to examine the applications submitted by decision until today; 6 months to publish technical and legal shortcomings in the 26.000 decisions on compensation; 6-month exclusionary term to submit new applications, without making citizens waste time behind court doors and, of course, in parallel with the justice reform, start an historical battle, an eye for an eye, with the gang of judges who has taken hostage our entire justice system and has acted as a criminal organization in relation to the Albanian people.
I want to make clear that when I say gang, I do not mean all of the judges, but I mean the gang that has kidnapped the system has made the judges, the most hated people by the Albanian people. This is the truth, whatever we say.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that the huge, extraordinary sacrifice that we will make all together as taxpayers, to go through the budget to the special compensation fund to the owners, is the most serious gesture that the Albanian government has made towards owners and for the right on property since 1912. I believe that whoever has a little common sense, should bow respectfully before this gesture. Any other story about 100% compensation and restitution of 56,000 square kilometers of Albania’s land is absurdity.
We are determined to pass this reform, as we passed with determination other reforms and as we will continue to pass with determination other reforms, because we have a mission: We want to build up the state.
And we cannot build up a state without taking into account the fact that what we have inherited is not a state. And in order to recover this body allover consumed by the cancer, radical reforms are needed, which we are determined accomplish thoroughly.
This will be a reform from which will benefit all those who are truly owners, and who have suffered due to the Communists and Democrats equally, but also the Albanian people, which means ordinary people, every honest family, all those who respect the law in this country and who did not inherit amphitheaters and neither violated any square centimeter of this country for illegal constructions. They deserve a big thank you, because they are part of a very big sacrifice. We will make this sacrifice all together, and the money will come out of this sacrifice, and through this sacrifice we will remove from Albania an unprecedented stain of shame, because we are a country that is found not only in Europe, but in no other part of the globe, for what we have done to ourselves, in a criminal conspiracy between impostors and intermediaries, government and gang of judges, not corrupt, but equally incriminated as organized crime itself.
Thank you very much!
