The government restores the import of garbage

The Albanian government plans to restore the permission to import waste into Albania, nearly eight years after it was forced to give up the idea as a result of numerous popular protests. The news is made known by a draft law of the Ministry of Environment posted for public consultation on the government's official website for public consultations.

The draft law, which aims to replace the current law on Integrated Waste Management, states in article 73 that in general the import of waste in Albania is prohibited except when the Council of Ministers allows it.

"In the territory of the Republic of Albania, only certain categories of non-hazardous waste are allowed to be imported, except for those defined in points 1 and 2 of this article, after the approval of the request for import by Decision of the Council of Ministers", it is stated in bill.

"The Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister, approves the list of non-hazardous waste that is allowed to be imported into the Republic of Albania, as well as the rules for the implementation of this article," it added.

While Article 74 further allows the transit of "non-hazardous waste" to Albania, for which a permit from the Minister of Environment is sufficient.

"I am absolutely against", Lavdosh Ferruni, activist of the Alliance Against Garbage Import, the informal social group that successfully fought first the "Berisha" government and then the "Rama" government to stop the import of garbage, declared to BIRN.

"Albania must continue to have a complete ban on the import of garbage. The degree of risk that together with the non-hazardous waste in Albania also the hazardous waste is today just as high as it was before," added Ferruni. "If the government is going to do anything worthwhile, it is to deal with the current environmental crisis that was caused by its incineration policy," emphasized Ferruni, while adding that allowing the import of garbage "would only make this situation worse." .

Albania has debated initiatives by three governments over the past twenty years that aimed to allow the import of waste, all of which failed due to popular protests. The first initiative came from former Prime Minister Fatos Nano, who approved a concession contract for an incineration plant for the controversial Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti. In 2011, the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha passed a law allowing import and granted licenses for waste imports, according to the format of the current proposal. Prime Minister Edi Rama, at the time when he was in the opposition, campaigned extensively promising to remove the possibility of legal import of garbage in Albania, a decision he took in the first days of his first mandate in 2013.

In 2016, Rama changed his mind and decided to allow the import of garbage again. The draft law was approved in the parliament, but was returned by former president Bujar Nishani and stalled after Rama's former ally, Ilir Meta and LSI, did not allow Nishani's decree to be overturned. The Socialists abandoned the initiative in 2017 when they accepted the president's decree.

Ferruni, who is one of the activists of the 2004, 2011 and 2016 campaigns, told BIRN: "We will immediately start organizing against."/ BIRN