New Complex for the Parliament of Albania - From Additions to the Existing Building, to the Collapse of the Pyramid. What Were the Previous Projects?
The Albanian Parliament exercises its functions in two buildings, one located on “Dëshmorët e Kombit” Boulevard which serves as the Speaker of the Assembly and where parliamentary committees are held, while the other building near the Tirana Castle hosts plenary sessions. The place where decisions are made, debates are held or laws are discussed and approved is expected to change soon.
A new building where all the services of the Parliament will be carried out in one place will be built, to further increase its efficiency. This was announced by Prime Minister Edi Rama during the National Assembly of the Socialist Party.
"The Albanian Parliament approves and issues laws for everyone, but it does not yet have its own law. It does not have its own financial independence, it does not have the status of its deputies, it does not have an administration supported sufficiently and properly in function of its challenges and even the Albanian Parliament is without a home, it does not have a home to guarantee practice, but the devil has also taken away the aesthetics of a parliament of a member state of the European Union ," said Rama.
Discussions and efforts to have only one building for the Albanian Parliament have been present for years.
In 2006, the then parliament announced an international competition for the design of a new parliamentary complex. In 2007, the Speaker of the Assembly Jozefina Topalli presented the winning design, with the new building to be built over the existing building on Dëshmorët e Kombit Boulevard, which once housed the Party’s Political Bureau, symbolizing that the people stand above the government. Construction, which was to cost 30 million euros, never began.
On the other hand, 2010 would mark another attempt to build a new parliament complex, with Prime Minister Sali Berisha declaring that the country’s upcoming 100th anniversary in 2012 should be celebrated with a new parliament building. The pyramid that served as the former museum of communist dictator Enver Hoxha would be demolished and the new building would be built there. This project would not come to fruition either.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of this year, during the opening of the eighth session of the tenth Legislature of the Assembly, Speaker Elisa Spiropali said, among other things, that the priority of the 11th legislature would be the adoption of the Law on the Organization and Functioning of the Assembly, which would presuppose the creation of logistical and financial conditions for deputies to be able to exercise their responsibilities.
"This could require a redesign of the Parliament building and the merging of the session hall with the parliamentary services premises into one. I am not talking simply about a spatial merger, but also functional, so that the parliamentary services can respond more efficiently to the parliamentary agenda and activities. The time has come to build the Parliament of European Albania", added Spiropali.
After the closure of the ALP (1991), the building of the Presidency of the Assembly partially housed the administration of the Assembly of Albania, the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman and, for a period of time, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports. Meanwhile, the plenary sessions building is a project dating back to 1955.
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