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International report: Rama's Territorial Reform 10 years ago failed
2026-02-03 14:58:41 / POLITIKË
Albania undertook the most profound territorial reform in the Region a decade ago, but more than 10 years after its implementation, a significant part has not been implemented on the ground.
A new report by SIGMA at the OECD and the European Union notes that, despite the deep territorial reform, local government in Albania continues to remain financially weak, with limited autonomy and serious difficulties in providing public services.
According to the document "Implementation and challenges of multi-level governance in the Western Balkans", Albania has built a legal framework aligned with EU standards for local self-government, but implementation has remained problematic, especially in finances, competencies and coordination with the central government.
The report evaluates the 2015 territorial reform, which reduced the number of local units from 373 to 61 municipalities, however, according to SIGMA, it was not accompanied by real financial and functional decentralization.
Today, Albanian municipalities are primarily responsible for technical infrastructure, such as waste management, water, sanitation, urban transport, and local roads, while health and education continue to remain centralized.
Only in 2024 has a pilot project been launched to give municipalities some additional powers in education, agriculture, and primary health care.
Although the Constitution and the law on local self-government guarantee the autonomy of municipalities, SIGMA notes that this autonomy is limited by the strong financial and administrative control of the central government.
In particular, salary ceilings for local administration make it difficult to attract qualified staff and weaken the real capacities of local government.
The report identifies financing as the biggest problem for Albanian municipalities. Own revenues, mainly from property taxes, construction and utility fees, account for only 39% of their revenues, while national tax allocations account for only 5%. The rest depends on transfers from the state budget.
Even the financial equality mechanism, designed to smooth out the differences between rich and poor municipalities, functions poorly. Albania has the highest financial inequality among municipalities in the Western Balkans, according to the report. As a result, most municipalities are in constant financial difficulties.
The report also highlights that municipalities are not involved in national policy-making, although formal dialogue structures exist. Meanwhile, inter-municipal cooperation on services such as waste, water or economic development remains limited and depends on temporary funding from donors.
According to SIGMA, Albania has laid the legal and territorial foundations for a stronger local government, but without deep fiscal reform and without a real transfer of competencies, decentralization remains incomplete. With this level of reform implementation, municipalities have remained only administrative links, not real actors of development and local democracy. /Monitor
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