Gentjan Skara
Head of Department of Law
The Right to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly during the COVID-19 pandemic in the light of the Albanian Constitutional Court’s Decision 11/2021 and the ECHR
by Gentjan Skara and Bojana Hajdini, 27 September 2021.
Extract
This brief provides an overview of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly during the COVID-19 pandemic in Albania. The paper addresses the following research question: whether and to what extent the response by the Albanian government to the pandemic were in compliance with ECHR standards? To answer this question, the paper describes briefly the measures of the Albanian government and then provides an overview of the recent decision of the Albanian Constitutional Court (11/21) concerning the constitutionality of the Order 633/2020 of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection which restricted the right of assembly. The third section analyze the Order 633/2020 in the light of the ECHR standards. The paper concludes that measures taken by the Ministry of Health and Social Protection lacked clarity on ratio legis and most importantly, information on how these measures would be implemented and to what extent they would restrict human rights.