The "Stop Usje" initiative accuses the State Environmental Inspectorate (SEI) of having discontinued the practice of publishing weekly reports on inspections carried out, without public explanation and without prior notice.
They say that until March 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency regularly published reports.
"They represented the only regular mechanism through which the public could gain at least minimal insight into the work of the inspection services: where controls are carried out, which entities are inspected and whether irregularities have been identified. This practice has now been discontinued. The decision was made without public explanation, without prior notice and without being foreseen in the Annual Work Plans of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources for 2024 and 2025, where transparency is listed as one of the basic principles of inspection," the initiative notes.
They requested an answer from "Stop for Usje" about who made the decision, by what act it was made, and based on what analysis it was decided that the public would receive less information.
"We did not receive a response. Instead, we received only one sentence from the Environmental Protection Agency: 'Weekly reports were not a legal obligation and therefore they will no longer be published.' This position is particularly worrying considering that the Environmental Protection Agency is currently implementing an EU Twinning project aimed precisely at increasing transparency, improving communication with the public and developing a platform with data on inspections and industrial capacities. That is why it is absurd that, in parallel with promises of greater openness, the Environmental Protection Agency is abolishing the only practice through which citizens regularly received information about inspection controls," they say.
According to the initiative, this means that while the EU is investing in greater transparency and availability of data, the DIE is in practice reducing the information available to citizens.
"The consequence is simple: instead of proactively published information, citizens will now have to submit Requests for Access to Public Information and wait up to 20 days to find out where and with whom inspections were conducted," the initiative points out.
Stop for Usje asks how the abolition of weekly reports is aligned with the objectives of the EU Twinning project and with, as they say, the commitments for greater transparency outlined in the institution's annual programs.
"While Minister Hoxha bombastically announced in March a publicly available Pollutant Register - through which integrated permit holders will have to regularly and transparently publish the results of emission measurements - the Ministry of Environment, an institution operating under the umbrella of the Ministry of Environment and Public Works, has in the meantime abolished the only publicly available information on the inspection controls carried out at precisely those polluters," the reaction states.
