Home > 5.1 Nature of the referendum > ALBANIA - Joint Opinion on the Draft Law on the Legislative Initiative of the Citizens
 
 
 
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Paragraph 24
 

The procedure appears rigid and time-consuming. The draft law requires collecting at last 20,000 signatures to register an initiative. While there is no international standard on the matter, it could lead quite often to a situation where the initiative group would fail to secure such support. In addition, further requirements, which are justified in case a draft has to be submitted to referendum, may be excessively burdensome when the initiative’s only effect is to initiate a debate in the parliament. This risks making the use of the citizen’s initiative very rare and ineffective, since simpler and easier ways to submit the same text to parliament (through individual MPs) may be considered