The documents on which the new territorial reform proposed by the majority is based offer a picture of Albania’s demographic polarization, how emigration and internal movements have emptied small towns and rural areas and the population is concentrated in a few urban centers.
“Administrative-Territorial Reform 2.0”, the document drafted by SP experts in the Special Parliamentary Commission, identifies a group of local units that exhibit repeated weaknesses in functionality, economy, demography and finance to justify the need to reconfiguration the territorial division map.
The analysis is based on three indices that show a deeply polarized demographic, economic and functional picture of municipalities, where on one side there are several urban centers where not only the population is concentrated, but there is also economic development, and on the other side there are the suburbs, especially the northeast, southeast and mountainous areas, which suffer a vicious circle of population shrinkage and aging, a survival economy with few formal jobs and municipal budgets that survive only from the central government, using the funds only for the salaries of the local administration.
The Urban Mass Index (IMU), one of the three analytical documents on which the proposal for a new map with 46 municipalities was based, merging 15 local units with the largest municipalities within the region, documents the territorial transformation of Albania after the 1990s, with fewer centers growing and more and more municipalities losing residents.
The processed data highlights an Albania divided into three realities: a very small group of municipalities that continue to attract population and economic activity, a group of municipalities with intermediate potential, and a majority of the territory that is losing critical mass of population.
The analysis is built on Census 2023 data and, included in the technical report accompanying the reform, suggests that the country is experiencing a concentration of population in fewer and fewer urban centers, while the rest of the territory is losing residents, functions and development capacities.
The index results show that only 13 municipalities are classified as having a high level of urban mass, but they are home to 62.5% of the country’s population. On the other hand, 30 municipalities, almost half of the administrative map, are classified as low and account for only 14.2% of the population, while 18 municipalities are ranked in the intermediate or average category.
According to data, the country’s population is concentrated in the capital, where over half a million inhabitants live, followed by the municipalities of Durrës, Vlorë, Elbasan, Shkodër, Fier, Kamëz and Berat.
At the other end, with fewer inhabitants, are municipalities such as Pusteci, Libohova, Himara, Këlcyra, Memaliaj, Selenica, Dropulli, Finiqi, Delvina and Kolonja, which have lost demographic and urban weight, according to the index.
The majority’s expert analysis does not build the index solely on the number of inhabitants, but combines other indicators such as: population size, real population density, the way the population is distributed in the territory, the demographic dependency ratio, and the level of urbanization.
This means that a municipality can have a large area, but if the population is concentrated in a small town and the rest of the territory is empty, it is considered structurally weak.
One of the most significant findings is that on average 57% of the territory is uninhabited. At the national level, the ‘Gini’ coefficient measuring the ratio of inhabitants per square km is 0.86, which indicates that inhabitants are concentrated in a few areas, while large parts of the territory remain empty.
This is especially evident in Kolonjë and Korçë, where the indicator reaches 0.97, indicating that the population is concentrated in a few urban areas and that the municipalities have a wide spread in the territory. Meanwhile, the Municipality of Kamza has the lowest value, 0.42, indicating that the territory of this municipality is inhabited. In general, on average, about 57% of the territory of a municipality is empty.
The data also shows an aging population of the municipalities.
The ‘dependency ratio’, which shows the burden that children and the elderly constitute for the working-age population, shows that in most municipalities (51) this burden is higher than the national average and, in many of them, the elderly outnumber children.
The analysis also shows a low level of urbanization with an average rate of 29.8% in 60 municipalities excluding Tirana in the analysis, while “25 municipalities do not have any settlements that meet the criteria to be called a town”. Based on this criterion, only 6 municipalities can be classified as cities, 13 as towns/suburbs and 42 as rural.
This demographic transformation is one of the arguments on which the socialist members of the Special Parliamentary Committee for Territorial Reform support the need for a new map with 46 municipalities.
The SP’s analytical document finds that the country no longer has the same population distribution as it did in 2014, when the current administrative-territorial division was implemented, which aimed to create larger and more efficient municipalities.
“Some areas have grown, while others have lost a significant portion of their population,” the report states, arguing that some municipalities have difficulty securing sustainable finances, qualified staff, and administrative capacity.
The document also does not reduce the problem only to administrative borders, but acknowledges that demographic changes are related to the movement of the population towards larger centers, population aging, territorial inequalities and economic concentration, phenomena that have changed the way Albanian municipalities function and suggests that changing administrative borders alone cannot solve the challenges stemming from emigration, demographic aging and economic concentration.
The Socialists have submitted to the Assembly a draft law that proposes a new division of the administrative-territorial map by merging several small units with larger municipalities, without arguing how the new map will solve these problems.
According to the new map, the municipalities of Fushë-Arrëz, Klos, Rrogozhinë, Dimal, Poliçan, Patos, Divjakë, Selenicë, Maliq, Këlcyrë, Memaliaj, Libohëvë, Cërrik, Belsh and Prrenjas lose their status as independent units of local self-government and merge with larger neighboring municipalities.
The proposal has met with opposition from residents of these areas who have risen up in protests as they see themselves deprived of access to public services with the merger of their local units. /BIRN